Marc Henry’s painterly worlds, presented on coarse canvas, are hallucinogenic and enigmatic. Henry uses digital images created on a computer, as sketches for his analogue works, through which he explores reality in a post-factual age. Prior to graduating from the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, the artist studied economics and curation, and incorporates this background into his reflections on the intertwining of society and the economy.
Marc, how did you get into art?
Looking back, I was already interested in crafty things as a child. I enjoyed knitting and embroidery; I was the only lad in my class who did that, at least. Later on, I came to painting through a detour through graffiti.
How did it all start?
I am from Munich, and it was the mid-2000s. Just like in the film Mid90s, we’d just hang out at the skate park. You really only had the choice of skating or spraying. And since I was a rubbish skater, I became a sprayer. Because of that humiliation, I still despise skaters to this day (laughs). Anyway, later on it started to annoy me that the graffiti was always being removed. So at some point I started spraying on canvas; eventually using acrylics, later oils. Besides, I have always loved going to museums and my Mum often took me along.
What did you spray?
They were figurative stories combined with text; that element always remained important. For a while, I had paintings with captions, sort of Jenny Holzer-style truisms. Even today, titles are essential to me.
Did you study art after leaving school?
No, that was not even up for discussion. It was not something I had seen in real life, nor could I have imagined that art could even be a profession. I studied economics in Munich and Stockholm, something ‘respectable’. That was important to my parents, who hadn’t studied themselves. But it also suited my interest in the intersections of economics, politics and society. Whilst studying in Stockholm, however, I rented a studio and prepared my portfolio there for the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.
Why Vienna, actually?
I was desperate to get into Daniel Richter’s class. He was already a hero to me as a teenager – partly because of his musical background, but also because of that post-punk attitude and aesthetic. That really spoke to me, coming from a graffiti background with a boldly political vibe.
Were you accepted straight away?
Yes, we had a brilliant interview; I remember that. Looking back, though, I’m still a bit surprised he took me on.
Maybe your portfolio was just that convincing?
Above all, it was designed with meticulous attention to detail – everything was beautifully taped down, with passe-partouts for the pictures (laughs).
Everything’s very tidy here too, the paint tubes are all lined up in rows…
Yes, that’s important to me. I can’t work if my tools aren’t ready (laughs).
With such a neat presentation, you might have stood out from the crowd…
Definitely, but Richter probably didn’t find that particularly appealing. We didn’t actually talk about my portfolio at all, but about De Kooning. That he painted his best works when he already had Alzheimer’s. And Richter found that rather curious and accepted me. I graduated in 2023.
How did you find a gallery afterwards?
I always took part in the exhibitions during the academy’s open days, and our class had a stand at the PARALLEL VIENNA fair; but my own exhibition projects outside the academy were also particularly important. I was very happy to be able to join Galerie Kandlhofer six months before I graduated.
What advice would you give to other younger artists looking to get into a gallery?
That is hard to say in general terms. I think the most important thing is that the work is right. Throughout my studies, I tried to develop something that felt sustainable to me. And then it was important to have the right people around at the right moments and to be supported. And I took a huge risk, put all my eggs in one basket, and kept getting lucky.
In what way?
In moments when my bank account was three times overdrawn, someone would suddenly buy two pictures. But I do believe you have to carve out your own position, regardless of market feedback. For example, I often heard at the start that my pictures were too gloomy. But you have to develop something that interests and challenges you personally.
What is your working process like?
A significant part of the work takes place digitally and on the computer. The image-finding process involves digital visual worlds. I’m interested in digital media landscapes and, over the years, I have built up an archive of photographs from which I draw ideas. It’s about the reception of media images, how images are manipulated and cropped. Then I create Photoshop collages on my laptop, including a selection from my own photographs.
How do you use these collages generated from the internet?
Actually, just as sketches. I print them out and hang them in the studio next to my workspace, but I only glance at them out of the corner of my eye. It’s becoming increasingly important to me to delve into the materiality. I want to move away from the digital and into the analogue, but I think what perhaps shows subconsciously in the images is that they are constructed according to classical rules of painting – and also consciously break with them.
Do you think the common thread running through your work is that you respect traditional techniques and bring them into the present?
Yes, absolutely. I believe that an awareness of craftsmanship is very important. You have to know theory and practice in order to break with them. I get the feeling that mistakes are often made in painting. Beuys did say, ‘The mistake begins the moment one sets out to buy a stretcher and canvas’ (laughs). He meant it differently, of course, but there’s a bit of truth in it.
Speaking of craftsmanship: do you paint quickly?
The first draft is quite quick, within a ten-hour working day, and then I decide whether to keep the painting or throw it away. If I keep it, I then work on the details for weeks.
What inspires you?
I find moments particularly fascinating where it’s no longer entirely clear whether one is interpreting something as a memory, a staged scene or reality. For me, this often develops into a speculative narrative that has a lot to do with fabricated memory and the post-truth era. At the same time, political and social circumstances also flow into the work. I try to revisit these main themes anew for every exhibition project.
Please give me an example.
This autumn, I’m opening my first institutional solo exhibition at the Neuer Aachener Kunstverein. In it, I explore the question of how malleable reality has become in the post-truth era, and translate this into a spatial dramaturgy. An important starting point for me is Johannes Kepler’s Somnium from 1609 —which already demonstrates that fiction can not only facilitate insight, but also serves as a projection screen for conspiracies. I am interested in how this historical constellation can be translated into our present day, that is, into media landscapes where facts, speculation, emotion and image production increasingly merge, and conspiracy narratives often operate with an aesthetic of evidence and apparent logic.
And what about the technique?
The emotional topography of film noir influences my work, not only in terms of motifs, but also in my painting style. I work on extremely coarse canvas and then repeatedly scrape away the underlying layers; the structure of the canvas ‘crackles’ through the layers of paint. This creates a ‘grain’, much like in analogue film.
The interiors that emerge sometimes look as if they’re from the 1950s?
Fundamentally, I find it interesting to paint pictures that are contemporary or present themselves as such. But I want to achieve this without, à la Nicole Eisenman, simply painting an iPhone 16 into the pictures. I want to situate the paintings in the present, but also have these temporal axes that make you wonder whether it wasn’t actually 50 years ago – or whether it’s taking place in the future.
From time to narrative: What do your paintings tell us?
For me, it’s absolutely crucial that viewers come up with their own story when viewing an exhibition. I think a good exhibition sets out the cornerstones, and the visitors write the chapters themselves. I want to introduce a certain narrative, but I believe that this is only part of the truth.
You spoke of reality in the post-truth era: what is reality for you?
Interestingly, in painting in particular, the oil painting still has something factual about it. It captures something across time – at least that is the idea. You can capture a fiction and thereby validate it. That is what I find so exciting about the medium.
Because we trust the image?
Yes, even in the age of AI and Photoshop. And even before that, there were already methods of manipulating images, for example in the darkroom. It’s astonishing that the image has lost relatively little of its claim to truth.
Do you observe your own generation through your work?
I depict a social reality that draws on observations of my generation. I’ll soon be thirty, and I am part of a generation whose youth was highly politicised. And now I have the feeling that a retreat into the private sphere is taking place.
The domesticated generation? The new Biedermeier?
Yes, I do think that’s partly true.
And you’re making art about it?
It’s one aspect that’s on my mind in some way. I don’t necessarily want to depict my generation, but I do want to engage with it.
How much does your background in economics actually still influence your work?
It played a major role in the exhibition The Theory of the Leisure Class in Berlin last year, for example. My inspiration was the book of the same name by Thorstein Veblen, an early sociologist and economist whom I came across during my studies. It deals with the prestige-generating function of consumption; reinterpreting and rethinking that in art was interesting.
Would you say that your work is generally critical of consumerism?
No, and I certainly do not make political art. But for me, my work expresses a certain personal perspective on society, which in turn is shaped by a certain perspective on the economy. In many respects, we are currently living in a very existentialist era. My friend Timotheus Ueberall wrote the following sentence about a person in his book Crazyland: “As if the Lord had only just cast him into the world.” That fits my protagonists perfectly.
Speaking of writers, your titles are also extraordinary.
The idea of text is important because you can add a layer of meaning, or lead people astray. That is why image titles are relevant, and I find it rather lazy when artists can’t come up with any.
Do you spend a long time working on your picture titles?
Yes, sometimes the titles exist before the pictures do – then I just have to paint the picture (laughs). The opposite happens too: paintings are about to be picked up, and I have to come up with ten titles in a flash. But I have a running list where I jot down titles; that helps.
You named one painting Looking for fun – though it actually showed a lonely security guard in the snow. Where do you yourself look for fun? Judging by their overall mood, probably not in your paintings?
Yes, I do have a lot of fun with the paintings – that is, painting them. But I’m probably also a melancholic person – though more in the Dürerian sense. My paintings have a certain twist, a different, playful layer; they are only melancholic at first glance. I don’t perceive them as gloomy; and I don’t understand at all why people sometimes think they are murder scenes.
You depict people, but also nature. Is 19th-century Romanticism an inspiration?
In my paintings, nature stands in contrast to the highly artificial worlds, or rather the business worlds, the engine rooms of capitalism. So I place a domesticated metaphor for nature – flowers in a vase, for example – within a business interior. Or a cypress tree in a museum display.
Does the contrast between artificiality and nature appeal to you?
I am interested in turning the concept of German Romanticism in painting on its head. Take Caspar David Friedrich, for instance, where man subjugates nature. My nature works turn this idea on its head, in the sense that: you can’t actually even see beyond the nearest tree. That is a metaphor for the limits of human knowledge.
What are your next projects?
In April I have got a residency at Palazzo Monti in Brescia, after which I’ll be presenting my first monograph in Venice. Then comes Liste Art Basel with the Berlin gallery Anton Janizewski. In September I’ll first be doing a group show with Lisa Kandlhofer at Frieze Seoul and then, as mentioned, my first institutional exhibition at the Neuer Aachener Kunstverein.
That sounds like a lot of work; do you still get round to painting?
At the moment I’m working six days a week, from ten in the morning until midnight.
What do you think of living and working in Vienna?
I feel really at home here; I’ve been here for quite a while now. It is a city that is affordable for artists and, with the Academy and the University of Applied Arts, offers a fertile environment for developing and establishing one’s own artistic voice. That combination is quite unique.
Text: Alexandra Markl
Photo: Christoph Liebentritt
