Mark Fox

Born 1963 in Cincinnati, Ohio

Lives and works in New York City

EDUCATION

1988    Stanford University, MFA

1985    Washington University, St. Louis, BFA

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2009    If therefore, SHAHEEN modern and contemporary art, Cleveland, OH

            Whitney Museum of American Art, Art Party Featured Artist, New York, NY

2008    Devin Borden Hiram Butler Gallery, Houston, TX

            Dust, Rice University Art Gallery, Houston, TX

            Paper Bulls, Lemberg Gallery, Ferndale, MI

2007    The Peacock Flesh, Larissa Goldston Gallery, New York, NY

            Dust, Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, PA

2006    Cricket's Song, Herbert F. Johnson Museum, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY

2005    Fascia, Larissa Goldston Gallery, New York, NY

            Inchmeal, Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, Santa Barbara, CA

            Prints and Drawings, Clay St. Press, Cincinnati, OH

            New Works on Paper, SHAHEEN modern and contemporary art, Cleveland, OH

2004    Dust, Kevin Bruk Gallery, Miami, FL

2003    Dust, Drawing installations and video projections, Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH 

2001    Downburst, Multi-media installation, Linda Schwartz Gallery, Cincinnati, OH

2000    Six Degrees Of..., Mixed media sculpture, Artworks Sculpture Project, Federal Plaza, Cincinnati, OH

1998    Fallen Stages: Drawings, pages and chapters from Account Me Puppet, The Detroit Institute of Art, Detroit, MI

            Recent Paintings, Hiestand Gallery,  Miami University, Oxford, OH

Articles of Faith, Drawings and Performance Ephemera, Southern Ohio Museum of Art, Portsmouth, OH

1996    Images from Wurlitzer Voice, Teplitzky and Scott Fine Arts, Cincinnati, OH

1995    Verses and Tongues, Puppets and Performance Ephemera, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH

1991    New Paintings, C.A.G.E. Gallery, Cincinnati, OH

1989    Recent Works, Patricia Herrmann Gallery, Covington, KY

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2010    Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY (forthcoming)

2009    Unmistakable, HERE Arts Center, New York, NY

            Paper Trail, Judi Rotenberg Gallery, Boston, MA

Talk Dirty to Me, Larissa Goldston Gallery, New York, NY

Just What Are They Saying... (curated by Beth Rudin DeWoody), Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, New Orleans, LA 

2008    Long Time No See, Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH

            I Won't Grow Up, Cheim and Read, New York, NY

            Stable Scrawl, Larissa Goldston Gallery, New York, NY

2007   Contemporary Art on Paper, Philadelphia Museum of Art,, Philadelphia, PA

2006    Analog Animation: Selections Spring 2006, The Drawing Center, New York, NY

2005    Portraits on Paper, Larissa Goldston Gallery, New York, NY

            Underage, Clifford Chance E US LLP/Dinaburg Arts LLC, New York, NY

            4, Bruce Gallery, Edinboro University, Edinboro, PA

            WOVEN, Gallery W52, New York, NY

            Drawn Out, Gallery 400, University of Illinois, Chicago, IL

2004    Itsy Bitsy Spider, Feature Inc., New York, NY

2003    Welcome, Linda Schwartz Gallery, Cincinnati, OH 

2002    Walk to Zet & Spiders from Zet, Drawing Installations and Video Projections, Jeleni Gallery, Foundation and Center for Contemporary Art, Prague

            Summer Vacation, Linda Schwartz Gallery, Cincinnati, OH

2001    Surface Active, The Aronoff Center for the Arts, Cincinnati, OH

            Journal of Being, Sonoma Museum of Visual Art, Santa Rosa, CA

            Accumulations, Kent State University, Akron, OH

            Working Space, Drawing and Film Installation, NeuRathaus Gallery, Munich, Germany

            Unit 2, What?, UNIT 2, Cincinnati, OH

1998    Stacked, The Aronoff Center for the Arts, Cincinnati, OH

            Small Works, Linda Schwartz Gallery, Cincinnati, OH

1996    sortasorid, Dileia Contemporary, Cincinnati, OH

            Evicted, High Street Gallery, Oxford, OH

PERFORMANCE/SAW THEATER

Mark Fox was the Creative Director of Saw Theater. Co-founded in 1993 with Anthony Luensman, Saw Theater was a non-profit contemporary puppet theater that conceived and produced original multi-media performances often in collaboration with artists and writers.

2001    and the movement of hearts came at me like a storm.., Intermedia Festival,The Aronoff Center for the Arts, Cincinnati, OH

1999    Account Me Puppet

               Theater for the New City, New York, NY

               Philadelphia Fringe Festival, Philadelphia, PA

               The Center for Puppetry Arts, Atlanta, GA

               Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI

  Saw Theater Performance Space, Cincinnati, OH

The Kiss, Webcast in collaboration in conjunction with Franklin Furnace and Pseudo Programs, New York, NY

             The Temper Ris'n

               The Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA

               Intermedia Festival, The Aronoff Center for the Arts, Cincinnati, OH

            Faust, Creation and performance of two large-scale puppets for Charles Gounod's Faust, directed by Nicholas Muni, The Cincinnati Opera, Cincinnati, OH

1998    and the movement of hearts came at me like a storm.., The Festival of International Puppet Theater, P.S. 122, New York, NY

            A Criminal's Story, Saw Theater Performance Space, Cincinnati, OH

1997    Stain

               Thread Waxing Space, New York, NY

               The Detroit Institute of Art, Detroit, MI

               Kenyon College, Gambier, OH

               Saw Theater Performance Space, Cincinnati, OH

            The Ascension, The Contemporary Dance Theater, Cincinnati, OH

1996    Wulitzer Voice, Saw Theater Performance Space, Cincinnati, OH

1995    Verses and Tongues, (Created and performed in conjunction with solo exhibit), Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH

1994    Ruins, Saw Theater Performance Space, Cincinnati, OH

            A Great Storm, Saw Theater Performance Space, Cincinnati, OH

1993    puppetstory, in situ, Cincinnati, OH

            Zorro, Shadow puppetry sequences commissioned in conjunction with The Ensemble Theater of Cincinnati Production.

 FILM/VIDEO

1999    Toy, Super 8 Film; 20 minutes, Super Super 8 Film Festival, Toured the U.S., Canada, Europe and Japan

Oyster Project, Super 8 Film created in conjunction with a live performance by the rock band Oyster, The Contemporary Dance Theater, Cincinnati, OH

1998    Built, Film Loop Mechanism, Crash, Rike Center, University of Dayton, Dayton, OH

Carousel Traces, Film Loop Mechanism (in collaboration with Andrea Sparks, 840 Gallery, College of Design, Architecture and Planning, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH

1996    Filmworks, Screening of selected short animated films, Kaldis, Cincinnati, OH

FELLOWSHIPS/GRANTS/AWARDS/RESIDENCIES

2002    Artist Residency, Foundation and Center for Contemporary Art, Prague, Czech Republic

            The Jim Henson Foundation Project Grant

2001    Artist Residency, Working Space, Awarded by Kultureferat, Munich, Germany

            Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship

2000    The Jim Henson Foundation Project Grant

            Greater Cincinnati Foundation Award

1999    Artist Residency, Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA

            Otto M. Budig Foundation Grant

            The Fine Arts Fund of Cincinnati Fund

            Cincinnati Arts Allocation Grant

            Cinergy Foundation Grant

            Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship

            Ohio Arts Council Operation Support Grant

1998    Greater Cincinnati Foundation Award

            The Jim Henson Foundation Project Grant

            Cincinnati Arts Allocation Grant

            Ohio Arts Council Individual Fellowship

1997    Puffin Foundation Grant

            Cincinnati Arts Allocation Grant

            Artist Residency, The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI

1995    Greater Cincinnati Foundation Award

1994    Cincinnati Arts Allocation Grant

1993    Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship

RECENT BIBLIOGRAPHY

2009    "artisti a New York", Corriere della Sera Io Donna, (January 2008)

2008    Kahn, Eve. "Extreme Art," ART + AUCTION  (September 2008)

            Schultze, Troy. "Rice Gallery Hosts Outrageous Window Installation Dust," HOUSTON PRESS  (August 7, 2008)

            Crawford, Lynn. "Mark Fox, Paper Bulls," The Brooklyn Rail (July 2008)

 Johnson, Ken. "Some Shows for Escape, Some for Introspection," The New York Times (July 4, 2008)

2007    "Mark Fox," The New Yorker  (November 12, 2007)

MARK FOX: Drawings

June 24^th - August 31^st, 2005

SHAHEEN Modern and Contemporary Art is delighted to announce an exhibition of drawings by New York based artist Mark Fox.  There will be an opening reception for the artist on Friday, June 24^th from 5:30 - 8:00 p.m.  The exhibition will continue through August 31^st.   

Operating under the heading of "The Saw Theater", Mark Fox has spent the bulk of the past decade parlaying a longtime obsession with drawing into grand theatrical experiments. Derived from the countless sketchbooks that he habitually filled and continues to fill from cover to cover, and incorporating sound, filmmaking, and collaboration with both live actors and homemade puppets, Fox's Saw Theater performances transported an artistic activity / medium typically regarded as portable and self-contained into the realm of large-scale theatrical spectacle.  In recent years, Fox has abandoned performance in favor of the possibilities afforded him by paper and a wide variety of drawing media.  Despite his return to traditional drawing materials, however, Fox's most recent and ongoing exploration into drawing yields anything but traditional results.  In addition to a series of more conventionally formatted drawings, Fox's forthcoming exhibition at SHAHEEN will feature a group of elaborate, sprawling net- or web-like works on paper that consist of hundreds of colorful tiny cut out drawings.  The ephemeral mixture of geometric symbols, every day objects, letters and anthropomorphic shapes that populate these works reference an expansive visual lexicon, ranging from ancient mythology, to the paintings of Hieronymous Bosch, to Catholic 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.  The feverish explosion of visual activity becomes an exploration of the artist's 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 profusion of information and networks that increasingly pervade our daily lives.  Fox finds comfort in chaos, embracing the frenzied flow and hectic pace of daily life in the early 21^st century. 

Over the past five years, Mark Fox's work has been the subject of one-person museum exhibitions at the Cincinnati Art Museum and, more recently, the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum.  His work has appeared in group exhibitions at Louisville's J.B. Speed Museum, and Feature Inc. (NY).  Fox will make his New York gallery debut this fall with a solo exhibition at Larissa Goldston Gallery.

Artist connects with patterns of ornate cutout paper drawings

The Plain Dealer

Friday, Aug 19, 2005

Dan Tranberg

The architect Mies van der Rohe is famous for perpetuating the idea that less is more. On the other end of the spectrum is New York- based artist Mark Fox, whose densely packed drawings gain their strength from vast accumulations of shapes -- the more, the better.

Individually, many of the doodles and casually rendered diagrams that make up Fox's elaborate works on paper aren't especially interesting. But when hundreds of them are connected together in weblike matrices, the results are fascinating.

The solo exhibition "Mark Fox: Drawings," on view at Shaheen Modern and Contemporary Art through Wednesday, Aug. 31, highlights two distinctly different types of work by Fox. One involves intricately cutting out small drawings and attaching them to each other to create large yet delicate lacelike forms that either hang from the ceiling or are suspended several inches in front of a wall.

The shadows cast by these works are almost as interesting as the works themselves. Those hung close to a wall are especially exciting, as they create the optical effect of blurred backgrounds behind crisply defined shapes. A second body of work by Fox is more conventional, done on single rectangular sheets of paper, but it's still all about amassing shapes that form intricately patterned surfaces. Several of them are extremely subtle; their repeating shapes are only visible upon close viewing.

Featuring 14 recent works, the show presents just enough to arouse interest in Fox, who is originally from Cincinnati and moved to New York in 2003. Now in his early 40s, Fox is enjoying great success as an emerging artist. About a third of the works at Shaheen have already sold, and he developed something of a cultlike following in Cincinnati before he left -- a local alternative weekly referred to him in 2001 as "the greatest living artist in Cincinnati."

In addition to the kinds of works on view at Shaheen, Fox has done performancebased work, some involving handmade puppets. He also co-founded an avant-garde theater troupe in Cincinnati called Saw Theater. But, according to gallery director Brett Shaheen, drawing remains at the core of all of Fox's activities. "He's the kind of person that constantly doodles in sketchbooks," Shaheen said.

Such obsessive behavior is exactly what makes Fox's work so compelling. The largest of his cut-paper pieces is made from 1,400 individual drawings, Shaheen said. The complexity of the process of cutting out and connecting that many bits of paper is staggering to think about.

From a distance, both types of work that Fox makes feel consistent with the complexity of modern life. It is as if he's embracing all of the chaos that surrounds us, making it oddly cohesive.

Just as artists and architects from the mid-20th century fixated on the idea of reducing and simplifying shapes to form pure symbols of modernity, Fox takes on the endless complexity of contemporary life as a new kind of model.

Somehow, it feels just right.

» PDF version

Mark Fox: Drawings

angle

Published in Issue #22-September/October 2005

By Lyz Bly

Artists throughout history sketched ideas for grand paintings before putting brush to canvas; today many artists keep sketchbooks, where they record their ideas with varying degrees of specificity. While the lack of inhibition inherent in sketches is compelling, it is rare to encounter an artist who consistently creates visually or conceptually interesting ones. However, this summer, Mark Fox, a former Cincinnatian who now lives in New York, demonstrated that sumptuous hues, subtly rendered lines, and luminescent surfaces can be
hewn from the most ordinary materials.

Mark Fox: Drawings included two bodies of work: a series of collages comprised of small, cut-out pieces of colored drawings, and a group of abstract works. The small, iconic images in the collages were connected, creating a spider-web, or lace-like effect that cast shadows on the gallery’s pristine walls. The interplay between the collages and the white walls was the most compelling feature of the series, as the content--a befuddled smattering of Fox’s personal iconography--was vague, at times bordering on self-indulgent.

The Untitled series had a less dramatic presence in the gallery, but each work was subtly exquisite. The surface of one of the most luxuriant drawings was built up with a creamy pigment, which appeared luminous, defying the prosaic paper beneath it. Fox created angular shapes out of meandering red-orange lines, contrasting them with a group of concentric circles, each incised into the surface of the piece. These drawings incited a visceral response; like a rich piece of chocolate, one bite is never enough. Mark Fox: Drawings, especially the Untitled series, left me wanting more.

Shaheen Modern and Contemporary Art
Cleveland
June 24 – August 31, 2005