1st Wikipedia draft for Dirk Marwig (part 11)

In 2003 Dirk Marwig had the show “Variations” featuring 17 different woodblock print designs in various colors, at the Nikolaus Fischer Gallery.

It was a beautiful array of strong, fundamental yet abstract ideas and their variations, offering the spectator scope and leeway for interpretation. Impeccably executed these woodblock prints would represent the continuing investigation of Dirk Marwig’s interest and love for associative and hallucinatory geometry.

This was to be his 2nd to last show he was to have at the Nikolaus Fischer gallery in Frankfurt.

One day while taking a walk around in the center of Madrid, Dirk Marwig noticed a silk screen print on a T-shirt of a young woman, depicting the image of his “Florida 135 Special” gun. He approached her and asked her where she purchased the item and she told him that her boyfriend ordered it for her on the Internet.

Dirk Marwig could not believe it. Again, someone, this time an anonymous internet entrepreneur took advantage of his work for personal gain without having the respect to mention him as the author. And again, it was this plagiarism in the first degree, which broke something in him.

This lack of respect and receiving no recognition, he became tired, fed-up and disgusted with everyone and the world in general. Self-punishment was his answer.

Dirk Marwig embarked on a dark, three year long, downward spiraling, self-destructive course, which cost him his marriage of 16 years as well as the life he had led in Madrid.

Slowly everything came to an end. Realizing the gravity of the situation Dirk Marwig, a romantic at heart, dramatically decided to leave his beloved Spain. In January of 2006, giving away all his possessions to friends, he left for Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Instead of experimentation in the studio with his work, this time having nothing more to lose, he chose to be a living chronicle of self inflicted pain, humiliation and suffering.

This empirical attempt was intended to gain a deeper insight, a first hand account, one could say, on what it meant to be ‘human’.

During the six-month period in Brazil, experiencing a variety of extreme ‘highs and lows’, Dirk Marwig came to the realization that the greatest power of all is the power of Love.

Slowly forgiving, respecting and learning to love himself again, he began to reconnect with his old ‘self’. Finding encouragement amongst the friends he had made while treading on this path of selfdestruction and ‘redemption’, Dirk Marwig began drawing again, something he had not really done in two years, freely giving these examples away to some of the nice people he had met in Rio. Not wanting to return to Spain and feeling somewhat alienated in the far away ‘third world’ country of Brazil, Dirk Marwig contacted acquaintances in Vancouver, Canada with the hope to start a new life there.

Travel plans were made and in June of 2006 Dirk Marwig arrived in Canada.

The beautiful situated city, with proximity to the Pacific Ocean and snow-capped mountains in combination with a mild microclimate seemed to be an ideal location to begin again.

Immediately he started to work, his first new approach being somewhat reminiscent of the earlier drawings he did when first arriving in Madrid. See photos: From left to right: “Vancouver Drawing” and “To Hell and Back”