Mark Schoening
Born in Minneapolis, MN. Received a B.F.A. from Massachusetts College of Art. Lives and works in Boston.
Recent solo exhibitions at Rhys Gallery, Boston , MA ; Montserrat College of Art, Beverly , MA ; Francesca’s, Boston , MA ; and National Arts Club, New York , NY .
Participated in group exhibitions at Rhys Gallery, Boston , MA ; Laconia Gallery, Boston, MA ; 808 Gallery, Boston University, Boston , MA ; The Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, Boston, MA; and Gallery 326, Boston, MA .
Compressing techniques and influences that range from Sumi ink drawings, Abstract Expressionist painting, computer modeling, Sci-Fi and graphic novels, and the work of scientific photographer Harold Edgerton, Mark Schoening employs painting and printing to visualize the rapid pace of our information-rich era. His densely layered canvases capture the controlled chaos of “information explosions,” not unlike Edgerton’s famous flash freeze photographs of a drop of milk disintegrating on impact.
But Schoening’s frozen gestures are the result of an intensive process that moves fluidly between methods, forms, and materials. He begins each canvas with a gestural painting to “set the stage” and then responds to it with digitally manipulated architectural forms that he then transfers onto the canvas, on top of the paint. This exchange repeats as Schoening builds up his surface, sometimes exceeding twenty layers in a single painting. Playing off the contrasts between computer-assisted and hand-made marks, these works become condensed visual expressions of the age-old dialogue between old and new, control and chaos, and the rational and irrational sides of human nature.
-Dina Deitsch, Assistant Curator
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Information piles up: the advertisements, the mechanisms, the media, the people. I am attached to it, in the midst of it, a part of it. However, as a painter, I am also a witness and a reactionary. My paintings speak of information explosions, where an entire environment can be physically contained in a seamlessly presented two-dimensional world. It is a reaction to the age of technology we find ourselves living in. The way we look at, perceive, and process ideas has changed, and because of that, because of what the viewer brings to the experience, these paintings could not have been created in any other time. This is not so much a comment on myself as it is about the viewers. They now have the ability to take in numerous ideas and aesthetic techniques all at once as a consequence of their everyday lives. What I am doing is letting the ideas fall in a frozen plane, allowing for further investigation.
-Mark Schoening
Image: Mark Schoening, The Czar (detail), 2007-2008, mixed media on canvas, 72 x 96, Lent by the Artist
Meet the Artist: Mark Schoening
Schoening will discuss his work in The 2008 DeCordova Annual
Museum Galleries
Saturday, May 17 at 3 pm
FREE with Campus admission
Eye Wonder Family Program: The 2008 DeCordova Annual
Guest Artist: Mark Schoening
Museum Galleries
Sunday, August 3, drop-in from 1 - 3 pm
FREE with Campus admission
