Entitled If therefore, Mark Fox’s second solo exhibition at SHAHEEN incorporates both his “cut” drawings – elaborate, sprawling, net-like works on paper that consist of hundreds of individual cutout drawings – and his “flat”, conventionally formatted drawings, which he executes on single, rectangular sheets of paper. While Fox’s 2005 exhibition at SHAHEEN was dominated by the cut drawings, his current exhibition at the gallery focuses heavily on the flat works. In the interim, the ongoing, synergistic dialogue between Fox’s cut and flat drawings has continued to develop and evolve, but the correlation between the two has shifted from a more purely visual and optical relationship to a more direct physical one. Whereas the flat drawings in Fox’s 2005 exhibition echoed the web-like structures and shadow-play created by the cut drawings, the flat drawings that populate If therefore have evolved from the direct material traces of the working process through which he creates his cut works. More specifically, Fox’s most recent flat drawings begin as “drop cloths” atop which he creates the individual cutout drawings that coalesce into the cut works. As Fox executes the individual elements for the cut drawings, the underlying white sheets receive the material remnants and overflow of Fox’s efforts -agglomerations of brush wipes, stray draftsmanship, doodles, notes/thoughts and an occasional phone-number. Using these sheets as platforms for the flat drawings, Fox works back into them, riffing off of and expounding upon the pre-existing accumulation of marks and gestures to conjure up a chaotic labyrinth of geometric forms, recognizable objects, text and anthropomorphic shapes that reference an expansive visual lexicon (ranging from ancient mythology, to the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch, to religious 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. Through this explosion of visual activity, Fox continues his ongoing exploration into his own 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 excess of information and networks that pervade our everyday lives.
Fox’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum, Cornell University (Ithaca, NY); the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia; the Cincinnati Art Museum; and the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, Santa Barbara, CA. This summer, Fox is the featured artist at the Whitney Museum of American Art’s 2009 “Art Party”. His work resides in the permanent collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and several other museum/institutional collections. Fox received his MFA from Stanford University and holds a BFA from Washington University, St. Louis. A native of Cincinnati, Ohio, Fox currently lives and works in New York City.