SHAHEEN Modern and Contemporary Art is delighted to announce an exhibition of drawings by New York based artist Mark Fox. There will be an opening reception for the artist on Friday, June 24th from 5:30 - 8:00 p.m. The exhibition will continue through August 31st.
Operating under the heading of "The Saw Theater", Mark Fox has spent the bulk of the past decade parlaying a longtime obsession with drawing into grand theatrical experiments. Derived from the countless sketchbooks that he habitually filled and continues to fill from cover to cover, and incorporating sound, filmmaking, and collaboration with both live actors and homemade puppets, Fox's Saw Theater performances transported an artistic activity / medium typically regarded as portable and self-contained into the realm of large-scale theatrical spectacle. In recent years, Fox has abandoned performance in favor of the possibilities afforded him by paper and a wide variety of drawing media. Despite his return to traditional drawing materials, however, Fox's most recent and ongoing exploration into drawing yields anything but traditional results. In addition to a series of more conventionally formatted drawings, Fox's forthcoming exhibition at SHAHEEN will feature a group of elaborate, sprawling net- or web-like works on paper that consist of hundreds of colorful tiny cut out drawings. The ephemeral mixture of geometric symbols, every day objects, letters and anthropomorphic shapes that populate these works reference an expansive visual lexicon, ranging from ancient mythology, to the paintings of Hieronymous Bosch, to Catholic iconography, to the artist's own personal symbolism. In juxtaposition and combination, Fox's profusion of visual elements suggest an endless variety of chance, non-linear narratives that burst into the consciousness of the viewer all at once. The feverish explosion of visual activity becomes an exploration of the artist's subconscious; the narrative threads or connections between random, or seemingly random thoughts and ideas that each of us begins and abandons thousands of times daily; and the profusion of information and networks that increasingly pervade our daily lives. Fox finds comfort in chaos, embracing the frenzied flow and hectic pace of daily life in the early 21st century.
Over the past five years, Mark Fox's work has been the subject of one-person museum exhibitions at the Cincinnati Art Museum and, more recently, the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum. His work has appeared in group exhibitions at Louisville's J.B. Speed Museum, and Feature Inc. (NY). Fox will make his New York gallery debut this fall with a solo exhibition at Larissa Goldston Gallery.