ABOUT

Al Makromo was born in 1965 in Bavaria. He lives and works in Bordeaux/France and Evenhausen/Germany. His works often combine several (natural) materials, including his favorite material, LISA polymers. It was in the 1980s that these light-collecting plastics were first discovered and presented. These are transparent polymers based on polycarbonates of high optical purity, tinted with special fluorescent dyes (respectively: blue-red-orange-green or yellow). These dyes are activated by UV light. Activation, i.e. the "gathering of light", takes place by the entry of light into the surfaces. Light exit occurs at the edges, or on surfaces where the full reflexion is removed by etching or back painting. Al Makromo was the first artist to incorporate these materials into his works in the 80s and has since continued to use them in his various sculptures and installations.

​

The inspiration for his artistic activity is situated at the interface of the italian ARTE POVERA movement and POP ART.

On the one hand he likes to rely on the philosophy of Arte Povera, celebrating a hymn to the primary element, to the banal element, to nature, but he combines it in a contradictory way with extremely artificial or commercial ingredients/materials like in Pop Art, thus generating a rich internal tension, which can be identified in most of his sculptures.