Exhibition
Mark Karasick - if you could see what I see through your eyes.
31 May 2013 – 29 Jun 2013
Event times
Mon - Sat, 10am - 4pm.
Address
- 2 Bridge Street
- Frome
- BA11 1BB
- United Kingdom
Travel Information
- By Bus: There are regular buses from Bath, Trowbridge and Wells.
- By Road: We are adjacent to the main car park
- By Rail: We are fifteen minutes walk from Frome railway station.
Opening this Friday evening, 31 May, from 6:00-8:00pm
About
Black Swan Arts are pleased to be presenting a solo exhibition by international artist Mark Karasick. For his show at Black Swan Arts, Mark has produced a site-specific installation in the gallery space. It will encapsulate ongoing questions that Mark is involved with ; memory, the ancestry contained in all of our DNA and a reflective viewing platform shared by us all.
Mark explains how this exhibition came to be:
"I have been working in fragments for numerous reasons. Firstly, when one has an exhibition it really is just a snapshot or fragment of an ongoing enquiry and this way of working is just an echo of that notion. This idea was first introduced to me by chance from an experience I had watching a man who worked on the metro/underground in Paris. He had a small satchel hanging off his shoulder and removed a few neatly folded papers that he took out of his bag putting them up to create a large billboard image. He was literally carrying a monument in his back pocket and it was an impressive bit of performance. On a practical note it also made perfect sense."
Mark's exhibition at Black Swan Arts is a reflection of his parents through portraits of them as children and a conceptual portrait of the artist, suspended in animation between his parents, creating links and dialectic between the spirit and the science of family connections. Mark's artistic practice often uses portraiture as its base in exploring not just the individual but portrait as an idea. His interest lies more in the essence of a life than in the specifics of portraiture.
"The scale that I am using to portray my parents elevates them to an almost mythological size where they also become an idea of parent and not just my parents. They gaze at each other across a room at an age before they would have known that the other exists. My own DNA is suspended between these two images as a symbol of the inherent possibilities and potential contained in our DNA. This exhibition is not just about my family, it is a contemplation of a continuum shared by us all⦠It will be designed so that one can commune with one's childhood and perhaps question the template of DNA, our history and how during our lifetime we might realise our genetic predilection and potential. As Richard Dawkins said: "DNA neither cares nor knows. DNA just is. And we dance to its music.""
Along with curator Tristan Stevens, collaborating with Mark on this project will create a sanctuary-like atmosphere in the gallery which heightens the potency of these stunning paintings and objects in an intimate and contemplative experience.
Mark Karasick's solo exhibition is opening next Friday evening, 31 May, from 6:00-8:00pm, The exhibition will continue until 29 June, Monday-Saturday, 10:00am-4:00pm. Black Swan Arts, 2 Bridge St. Frome BA11 1BB