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

If therefore

June 19^th – August 7^th, 2009

SHAHEEN modern and contemporary art is pleased to announce

an exhibition of recent drawings by Mark Fox

Entitled If therefore, Mark Fox’s second solo exhibition at SHAHEEN incorporates both his “cut” drawings – elaborate, sprawling, net-like works on paper that consist of hundreds of individual cutout drawings – and his “flat”, conventionally formatted drawings, which he executes on single, rectangular sheets of paper.  While Fox’s 2005 exhibition at SHAHEEN was dominated by the cut drawings, his current exhibition at the gallery focuses heavily on the flat works.  In the interim, the ongoing, synergistic dialogue between Fox’s cut and flat drawings has continued to develop and evolve, but the correlation between the two has shifted from a more purely visual and optical relationship to a more direct physical one.  Whereas the flat drawings in Fox’s 2005 exhibition echoed the web-like structures and shadow-play created by the cut drawings, the flat drawings that populate If therefore have evolved from the direct material traces of the working process through which he creates his cut works.  More specifically, Fox’s most recent flat drawings begin as “drop cloths” atop which he creates the individual cutout drawings that coalesce into the cut works.  As Fox executes the individual elements for the cut drawings, the underlying white sheets receive the material remnants and overflow of Fox’s efforts -agglomerations of brush wipes, stray draftsmanship, doodles, notes/thoughts and an occasional phone-number.  Using these sheets as platforms for the flat drawings, Fox works back into them, riffing off of and expounding upon the pre-existing accumulation of marks and gestures to conjure up a chaotic labyrinth of geometric forms, recognizable objects, text and anthropomorphic shapes that reference an expansive visual lexicon (ranging from ancient mythology, to the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch, to religious 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.  Through this explosion of visual activity, Fox continues his ongoing exploration into his own 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 excess of information and networks that pervade our everyday lives. 

Fox’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum, Cornell University (Ithaca, NY); the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia; the Cincinnati Art Museum; and the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, Santa Barbara, CA. This summer, Fox is the featured artist at the Whitney Museum of American Art’s 2009 “Art Party”.  His work resides in the permanent collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and several other museum/institutional collections. Fox received his MFA from Stanford University and holds a BFA from Washington University, St. Louis.  A native of Cincinnati, Ohio, Fox currently lives and works in New York City.

During the exhibition, SHAHEEN is open Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday 11 a.m. – 4 p.m., Thursday 11 a.m. – 6 p.m. and by appointment.

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Artist Mark Fox draws on the accidental to create abstract drawings
by Dan Tranberg / Special to The Plain Dealer
Sunday July 12, 2009

Ohio native Mark Fox is known for his delicate and airy wall-mounted assemblages, made from hundreds of small, quirky cutout drawings that are attached to each other using tiny strips of linen tape.

Like lace, they create playful shadows as light passes through them and dances on the walls beyond.

Examples of these works can be found in the permanent collections of such heavyweight institutions as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and New York's Whitney Museum of American Art.

But Fox's current solo exhibition, titled "If Therefore," at Shaheen Modern and Contemporary Art in Cleveland, shows Fox, who now lives and works in New York City, to be exploring another direction.

The show features more than a dozen newdrawings on single sheets of paper, which began in Fox's studio as makeshift dropcloths. Through his process of making tiny cutout drawings, these sheets of paper, presumably placed on studio tabletops, accumulate a variety of marks: overspill, stray brushstrokes
and random doodles. Fox then uses the accidental markings as starting points for new works on paper, which echo some of the qualities of his assemblages.

The exhibit includes two cutout assemblages from 2007, encouraging comparison with the drawings, most of which are from 2009. As drawings, Fox's newer works take on a range of issues that are unique to two-dimensional art -- and this is where they become interesting.

While his cutout assemblages rely on the interplay of actual light and shadow within three-dimensional space, his new drawings cannot. As if to compensate for this, he creates bold and dynamic relationships between light and dark shapes in his flat drawings.

In many of them, an accumulation of darker images forms an overall arch shape, which stands in contrast to an equally complex grouping of white and off-white shapes or to relatively large areas of stark white paper.

On the whole, this approach works beautifully.The flat drawings, all of which are 22 by 30 inches, display a more subtle range of spatial relationships than the cutout works. Moreover, the individual shapes tend to merge together in the drawings, suggesting that the varied assortment of marks is part of a more unified (albeit chaotic) system.

Fox's assemblages are commonly interpreted as comments on our culture of seemingly boundless accumulation. His drawings are less concrete than that, in part because the things that accumulate in them are mostly abstract shapes.

At times, the open-endedness of the drawings makes them appear like Modernist abstractions. American Modernist painter Stuart Davis comes to mind. While Davis tended to use dead-flat shapes, his rhythmic abstract compositions often featured a similarly chaotic mix of geometric and biomorphic forms, which he unified, as Fox does, primarily though his use of color.

But Fox's drawings clearly belong to the present day. The sheer eccentricity of his many various doodlelike marks seems to speak of a pluralistic and multifaceted world in which an overwhelmingly dominant sense of order would feel like a sentimental remnant of the past.

» PDF version