CURRENT EXHIBITION

THE AFTERMATH exhibition launches on Friday 22 August from 7pm.
artrmx e.V. is at Hospeltstraße 69, 50825 Köln

The exhibition is open on Fridays & Saturdays from 4-8pm, Sundays 12noon-7pm.

Marlini Wickramasinha THE AFTERMATH

“I don't paint the event itself, but rather what remains of it. The silence after the explosion, the echo of history, the shadow of memory.”

In her visually stunning black-and-white paintings and delicate drawings, Marlini Wickramasinha has developed a pictorial language of rare consistency. For decades, she has devoted herself to those moments in which time seems to stand still – the seconds after the explosion, the empty calm after the storm, the silence in the chaos. She does not paint the act of violence, but what remains of it: landscapes of rubble, shards of history, frozen silence.

What makes her works so powerful is not only the subject matter, but also the clarity of her vision. A gaze sharpened by a lengthy, uncompromising artistic process that does not seek sensation, but truth. In a world constantly flooded by images, her paintings become a counterpoint: slowed down, concentrated and deeply moving in their intensity.

These visual worlds reduced to grey, black and white, show no pale shadows, but an infinite range of nuances. Wickramasinha turns grey into the colour of silence, and silence into a resonance chamber for memory, loss and transformation. The titles of her work – Flak-Berlin 1945; Pearl Harbour, Jet Fighter over Syria – refer to real locations, but she is never concerned with chronicling violence, but rather with its poetic, timeless after-images. In her paintings, created in dialogue with press photos and documentary material, she deconstructs reality in order to remake it anew. In this way fragments become entire spaces, silence become images, disasters become possibilities.

This exhibition honours not only the work of an artist, but also the attitude of a contemporary witness: quiet, clear and unwavering – in the eye of the whirlwind.

Given the current global situation – from the war in Ukraine to the Gaza conflict to climate disasters and the constant flood of images on social media – Wickramasinha's works take on new relevance. Her artwork is a counterbalance to the sensory overload caused by live images and headlines. It deprives the horror of its sensational power without aestheticising it. At a time when images circulate in seconds and disasters are consumed by the media, Marlini Wickramasinha invites us to pause – to contemplate and silently confront what remains.

About the Artist
Marlini Wickramasinha, born in 1934 in Sri Lanka, came to Germany in 1960 and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. She has been living and working in Cologne since the 1960s. Last year she turned 90 years old – and to this day she has lost none of the power and clarity of her artistic language. Her works, rendered in powerful black, white and grey, deal with war, destruction and the stillness after – with a depth and consistency that is unique in the contemporary art landscape.

Despite her uncompromising, powerful work, she has received little appreciation to date. This exhibition not only aims to showcase her work, but also to give a significant, often overlooked voice of German postwar art the recognition she deserves.

The Aftermath exhibition is sponsored by the Cultural Office of the City of Cologne and the Cologne-Ehrenfeld District Council. artrmx e.V. would like to thank the sponsors for their support.

→ CLICK HERE FOR THE ORIGINAL GERMAN TEXT