Once the centrepiece of an 18th-century rococo altar by Johann Paul Egell, the original Mannheim High Altar now survives only in fragments — its opulence erased, its figures lost to war. In Red Mannheim, that absence is made visible. The paintings do not reconstruct the past; they stage its aftermath.
Screen-printed in oil paint, the works blur the line between reproduction and reverence. A deep red dominates — not symbolic, but sensorial — saturating the panels with an intensity that suggests both the sacred and the scorched. What once was carved is now flat. What once teemed with saints and sorrow is reduced to silhouettes and drips.
And yet, two figures remain: Adam and Eve. Small, grief-struck, and alone. No Christ. No Mary. No redemption. Only the first witnesses, now last survivors, left to mourn what came after paradise. The altar has become a stage, and they its only actors — children of the fall, rehearsing a future.
These are not paintings of loss, but of what loss leaves behind. In their scale and silence, they ask what happens when history falters — and whether something human can still begin again.
Exhibited:
St Pauls Cathedral, London, 2011.
Mark Alexander, Mannheim Paintings, Gallerie Bastian, Berlin. 2014.
Mark Alexander, Mannheim Paintings, Bode Museum, Berlin, 2014–2015.
