Stephan Marx is a percussionist/musician turned painter. After escaping communist Hungary as a teenager, most of his early years in America were spent in West Virginia at WVU specializing in world percussion. Coming to New York in 1987, he found himself wrapped up in the world of improvisational jazz and avant-garde art. After years of making “action art” and improvised performances and installations, his body of work has consolidated into oil paintings and some sculptures focusing on experienced real-life events with a mystic dream-like aesthetic.
Artist Statement
In the labyrinth of my artistic exploration, I draw inspiration from Fauvist juxtaposition, Impressionist sensitive intuition, and Symbolist mysticism. I have been deeply interested in dream symbols/psychology and alchemical occult magic. Secret sacred knowledge has been an interest and a part of my life. I don’t want to answer questions but induce new ones. I recombine new and old settings and symbologies to find new meanings in my paintings – initially starting from a real experience and slowly turning it into another universe. As an 18-year-old I escaped communist Hungary and came to the United States as a refugee; I had seen and faced death and completely otherworldly circumstances hundreds of times even before I was 16. Living in the aftermath of post-WWII and during the soviet occupation I’ve always felt the world I came from was a decaying remnant of a civilization with lost magic and technology. From finding unexploded minefields to old nazi hoarded treasures in abandoned places – my life has been shrouded in magic.