Bernhard Martin's New Dinner Party Paintings at Thaddaeus Ropac Paris

German painter Bernhard Martin (born 1966) presents a new series of works at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Paris from June 20 to July 27, 2013, his first exhibition since 2007. Martin abandons his trademark heterogeneous style—which combined multiple pictorial techniques, porcelain-like female nudes, 1970s graphic elements, and relief flowers—for a unified pastel palette on raw canvas. The new paintings form a storyboard of a bourgeois dinner party gone awry, with guests' legs visible under white tablecloths, food strewn on the floor, and a 3D effect created by sharper rendering of objects. The atmosphere oscillates between brawl and orgy, recalling films like Buñuel's The Exterminating Angel, Pasolini's Salò, and Blake Edwards' The Party. Martin cites Michel Houellebecq's novels as inspiration for the themes of decadence and societal decay. Three large drawings on wine-dark backgrounds depict apocalyptic scenes of murder, orgies, cannibalism, and collective suicide, with Arcimboldesque heads emerging from the crowds.