Mark Hagen “The Big Hole”
Marlborough Chelsea
This event has ended.
For his second solo exhibition with the gallery, Los Angeles-based artist Mark Hagen presents a group of paintings, along with sculptures in anodized titanium and poured aluminum. These new works manifest the artist’s interest in the compression and elasticity of time, the poetic application of archeological methodologies, and the benefits and challenges of Modernism’s persistent specter.
The Big Hole is organized around the formal logic of the architectural screen—a porous barrier that controls movement but that remains transparent—an object that is both seen and seen through. Upon entering the gallery, the viewer passes through a floor- to-ceiling aperture fabricated in space-age metals that have been incongruously colored using a kitchen-sink process of soda and electricity. The portal acts as a prism amplifying the intention and experience of the accompanying works.
Nearby, paintings made by pouring latex paint through raw burlap and onto a variety of textured plastic sheets, stratifying the pigments in a makeshift mold, creating an incidental image/object. Masked into various diamond-shaped and gradient-faded patterns (some incorporating text elements) their repetition mimics the decorative functionality of fencing and an accordion-like mutability and endlessness.
Similarly, the freeform poured aluminum works are made up of fence-like sections that can be lashed together and arranged in variable combination. These, too, have the blurred effect of handmade artifact and high-precision fabrication, the mystical and the matter- of-fact that haunts Hagen’s work as a whole.
Media
Schedule
from March 17, 2016 to April 23, 2016
Opening Reception on 2016-03-17 from 18:00 to 20:00