Mark Wright
The aftermath of a napalm strike comes to mind when immersed in the
paintings of Mark Wright as synthetic and haunting beauty belie
moribund existence in his toxic wastelands. The sublime nature and
stillness of the landscapes simultaneously recall petrified forests,
the ritual aboriginal burnings of the bush, Dante's descent in to the
bowels of the earth and the allusion to the wounding of the Fisher
King and the sympathetic sterility and infertility of his lands that
is caused when he is injured. His kingdom suffers as he does, his
impotence affecting the fertility of the land and reducing it to a
barren wasteland. Little is left for him to do but fish in the river
near his castle. Weaving strands from ancient celtic myths through to
T S Eliots "The Wasteland" and The Who's "Baba O'Riley" with the kind
of concerns now 40 years on, that it isn't the youthful fear of
growing old which engulfs our collective thinking, but the worrying
concerns that there may not be a future to grow old in at all if we
continue to consciously deplete our natural resources and pollute our
planet at the rate we are doing. Mark Wright's paintings encapsulate
the psychology of our neurotically dyspeptic world in a place where we
are peculiarly happy to wallow in and offer us a focused and
penetrating view of our skewed habitue.
Mark Wright is a graduate from Central School of Art and The Royal
College of Art London in 1990 since then he has exhibited widely in
the UK, USA and Europe. Recent solo exhibitions include:
Solo Exhibitions include: Carter Presents London 2008, Metropole
Galleries 2006, Folkestone, Kent. i-Level Gallery, London 2003.
Recent Group exhibitions include: Scope London with Carter Presents
2006, Scope Miami 2007, Year 07 London 2007 Kamikaze Blossom,
Fieldgate Gallery, London 2006
He is currently exhibiting in: " Nature, attitude, aspects of
international painting and photography" with Marie-Jo Lafontaine,
Allessandro Raho, Emil Nolde, Max Ernst, Fernando Botero amongst
others at Samuelis Baumgarte Galerie, Bielefeld Germany 2008.
Mark Wright
"Ice scape" 30 by 20 inches giclee print on Hanhemuhle rag 2008