MARK WALLINGER MARK
4 March – 4 June 2017
At Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee and The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh
Dundee Contemporary Arts and The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh are delighted to present MARK WALLINGER MARK, the first exhibition in Scotland of work by Turner Prize-winning artist Mark Wallinger.
The exhibition is in two parts, shown simultaneously in the both venues from Saturday 4 March until Sunday 4 June 2017. It features Wallinger’s most recent body of work: the id Paintings. These are presented alongside a series of sculptures, films and wall based works that further explore the themes of identity, reflection and perception addressed in this new work.
The id Paintings (2015-2016), have grown out of Wallinger’s extensive series of self-portraits, and they reference the artist’s own body. His height – and therefore his arm span – is the basis of the canvas size. They are exactly this measurement in width and double in height. Wallinger uses symmetrical bodily gestures on the two halves of the canvas to mirror one another, recallingthe bilateral symmetry of Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Vitruvian Man’ and more explicitly the Rorschach test. Created by sweeping paint-laden hands across the canvas in active freeform gestures, the id Paintings bear the evidence of their making and of the artist’s encounter with the surface. In recognising figures and shapes in the material, the viewer reveals their own desires and predilections while trying to interpret those of the artist.
In Edinburgh theid Paintings are shown among other works concerned with the staging of identity. In Ego (2016), two iPhone photographs depict the hands of their artist/creator. The work, doubly hubristic, is a playful recreation of Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam.
The show also features the found poem, Adam (2003) (the first person singular), an index of the first lines of poems beginning with ‘I’ in Palgrave’s Golden Treasury, a breathless inventory of the self’s passions. A wall of Self Portraits (2007- 2015) is part of Wallinger’s extensive series that takes the capital ‘I’, the word we all have for ourselves, and tries to extract some expressive force from it. For the installation, According to Mark (2010), a hundred empty chairs are marked ‘MARK’ as if they belonged together, and conjoined further as a congregation by perspectival strings meeting at a God-like eye high on the facing wall. I am Innocent (2010), sends Velazquez’s Pope spinning, while all through the night the artist, dressed in a bear suit, wanders the glassy immensity of Berlin’s NeueNationalgalerie in Sleeper (2004).
In Dundee, themes of circularity and symmetry continue. Twelve of Wallinger’s id Paintings surround a new work, Self (Symbol) 2017, a capitalized ‘I’ in Symbol font, aggrandized as a three-dimensional statue the height of the artist. For Shadow Walker (2011) the artist filmed his shadow walking ahead of him, the figure the sun draws on the London street assuming an autonomous existence as ‘real’ as the artist’s actual body. ForMARK (2010) the artist chalked the title all over the city of London within the parameters of single standard sized brick. This deadpan tagging is rendered as a photographic slideshow, each MARK at the vanishing point of 2,265 images.Time And Relative Dimensions In Space(2001), a mirrored TARDIS, is an object trying to shrug off its corporeal form and vanish to some other place and time altogether.
Time is also at play in two large video works. We follow the work of three scaffolders on a beach in Construction Site (2011), as they erect a tower aligned perfectly to the horizon, only to disassemble it and start all over again. In Ever Since (2012) a life sized projected image of a barber’s shop is given eternal life as one revolution of the barber’s pole is animated, spiraling upward forever. In Wallinger’s new four-screen video work, Orrery (2016) the revolutions of an oak tree situated in the middle of a municipal roundabout in Essex are portrayed through the four seasons and by extension become a contemplation of the orbit of our planet around the sun and our place in the universe. The scale and content of Venus and Mars (2016) is ambiguous. These circular photographic images of human flesh, isolated from their original context, could be immense and distant celestial bodies.
Beth Bate, Director of DCA, said: ‘We’re delighted to be welcoming Mark Wallinger to our galleries and to be working alongside The Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh in this compelling exhibition of two parts. Mark's first show in Scotland features his new body of work, the enigmaticid Paintings. We've selected a series of sculptures, films and wall based pieces that further explore the themes addressed in this new work - identity, reflection and perception. We can’t wait to welcome audiences to this exciting exhibition.’
Fiona Bradley, Director of The Fruitmarket Gallery said: ‘Mark Wallinger’s work is timely and compelling, his direct and sometimes playful approach underpinned by a strong sense of social and political commitment.I’m very pleased to be working with him, and with Dundee Contemporary Arts, and hope that audiences in both Edinburgh and Dundee will enjoy the opportunity to engage with his work’.
MARKWALLINGER MARKis a collaboration betweenSerlachius Museums, Mänttä, The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh and Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee.
Louise Warmington, Press and Marketing Manager
P or call 0131 226 8182.
If you would like further information about the exhibition at Dundee Contemporary Arts,please contact Bethany Watson, Communications Officer, on 01382 909 251 or at .
Notes to editors
Mark Wallinger was born in Chigwell, England, 1959. He studied in London at the Chelsea School of Art (1978–81) and Goldsmiths College (1983–85). He was first nominated for the Turner Prize in 1995, and again in 2007 when he won. His work is part of numerous leading international collections including Tate, London; MoMA, New York; and Centre Pompidou, Paris. He is represented by Hauser & Wirth.
New Book
The Fruitmarket Gallery, Serlachius Museums, Mänttä and Dundee Contemporary Arts have published a new book to accompany the exhibition. MARK WALLINGER MARK focuses on identity as a theme within Mark Wallinger’s work, and illustrates his id Paintings extensively and for the first time.
The Fruitmarket Gallery brings to Scotland some of the world’s most important contemporary artists. We recognise that art can change lives and we offer an intimate encounter with art for free.
Wewelcome all audiences, making it easy for everyone to engage with art, encouraging questions and supporting debate.
Dundee Contemporary Arts is an internationally renowned centre for contemporary art that enables audiences, artists and participants to see, experience and create. With two beautiful large-scale gallery spaces, two thriving cinema screens, a busy print studio, an award-winning learning programme, and a packed programme of events, workshops, classes and activities aimed at all ages and abilities, DCA is one of the most successful arts organisations in the UK and is supported by Creative Scotland and Dundee City Council.