mark sharp

Mark SharpPaintings

Untitled #2206, 2016, 20 x 16 inches, Mixed Media on Canvas

Untitled #2207201624 x 20 inchesMixed Media on Canvas



Untitled # 2211201624 x 18 inchesMixed Media on Canvas

Commentary

When an artist of profound experience reaches a crossroads in his work, as Mark Sharp did at the beginning of this year, he immediately recognizes it. What is truly remarkable is how radically Sharp adapted his practice in response.

Though it is clearly the same artistic sensibility that underpins the collaged pictures that Sharp has been making for the last several months, the shift in approach from his previous work affects the most basic principles of his art. While the earlier pictures were predicated upon invention, this new work is founded in discovery: whereas the carefully interlocking brushed ovoids in his previous pictures were conjured from Sharp’s interior reality, pictorial elements are now encountered in the physical materials from which the pictures are crafted. This is all the more apparent because these materials are drawn from realms beyond those we normally encounter in sophisticated abstract art. Alongside fabric painted in a whole range of ways, Sharp adds sections that are immediately identifiable as pieces cut and torn from towels, shirts, or blue jeans.

This enhances the complexity of Sharp’s endeavor. His range of shapes explodes; rather than existing in purely pictorial space, their texture, their actual substance, and the layering one over another lend the paintings a literal depth. It is as though an entire history of remembered or phantom paintings exists beyond what we see.

The landscape sources that informed even the most abstract of Sharp’s earlier paintings have disappeared; instead we find ourselves contemplating massive forms that compete for dominance in a painted expanse that escapes the constraints of gravity and where imagination and invention are given full rein.

Mark Sharp has never imagined that paintings like these – that belong squarely in the tradition of modernist abstraction – can only be approached in a specific way that the artist dictates. Instead he seeks to offer his viewers as rich a range of interpretive choices as he can. It is no wonder that he is excited by this new work, for he now finds himself in a realm of aesthetic discovery perfectly suited to his temperament and his artistic ambitions.

– Robert Ayers

Mark Sharp

Biography

Mark Sharp has enjoyed success as a full-time professional artist since the late 1990s and has recently navigated through a sharp shift of direction in his professional practice that has resulted in an artistic breakthrough.

A native of Holland, Michigan, Sharp’s artistic sensibilities were encouraged from the outset. He took private drawing lessons as a child, and then during his high school years he attended art classes at the local Hope College. He went on to attend Hope College full time before embarking on the BFA program in the School of Art at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, graduating in 1990.

During his time in Ann Arbor, Sharp’s enthusiasms progressed from a preference for representational work, specifically painting and drawing the life model, to a fascination with abstraction. Strongly influ-enced by Marsden Hartley, Hans Hoffman and Willem de Kooning, this approach was out of keeping with the aesthetics of the School of Art at that time. As a consequence Sharp began to devote his artistic energy to ceramics, an activity that he still practices. Perhaps equally important was his simultaneous study of piano. Sharp has been a lifelong music enthusiast, and parallels have often been suggested between musical composition and the balance of structure and the improvisational qualities that Sharp brings to his painting process.

Mark Sharp has been exhibited widely in over twenty one and two-person exhibitions nationwide, in-cluding those at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY; Three Sixty Three Gallery, Memphis; Black Rock Center for the Arts, Maryland; Barrett Fine Art Gallery, Utica College, NY; Ezair Gallery, New York City; 4 Star Gallery, Indianapolis; and the University of Illinois, Chicago. He has become a stalwart of New York’s Walter Wickiser Gallery; Wickiser has exhibited his work in more than two dozen exhi-bitions (group and two-person) and art fairs. His work is included in the public collections of DePaul University, Concordia University, and Hope College, and in numerous corporate collections. His work has been featured in d’Art International, and he has received coverage in NY Arts Magazine, CULTURE VULTURE, and the Indianapolis Star.

Over the course of his career Mark Sharp has had homes in and around Chicago and Washington, DC. He has recently returned to Holland, Michigan where he resides with his family.

Mark Sharp

Artist Statement

During the first months of 2016 new pictorial possibilities began to open up in a body of work in which collage assumed a central role. Though this was entirely new terrain the investigation has benefited enormously from novel techniques that were quickly absorbed into this practice.

In addition to the more traditional paint and canvas, materials for these new pictures are discovered on regular forays to second hand stores. These include bed sheets, towels, and a whole range of articles of clothing, and they are carefully selected to provide a broad range of options for color and texture.

A first preliminary layer of the finished painting is made by applying paint to bed sheets. This involves a whole gamut of techniques from traditional brushing to daubing, pouring, dripping, bleeding, spattering, and spraying. Once dry, the sheets are cut into sections and the most compelling pieces are glued to stretched canvas. This provides the basis for further aesthetic exploration through the addition and arrangement of more painted sections and those cut or torn from pieces of clothing.

Several pictures can be underway at any one time, and each goes through alternate periods of detailed consideration and more extemporaneous action. This results in the discoveries and surprises that lie at the heart of this work.

The range of surface incident has snowballed, and so has the scope of painting techniques employed. Each piece of salvaged fabric brings with it color, pattern, texture, weight, and unique characteristics like folds, seams, tears, and puckers. Layering and knotting these pieces thrusts the work into multiple dimensions.

While observation of the natural world is far less important to the current work, relationships between individual paintings can be far more literal, because identical painted or patterned material can show up in a number of works simultaneously. Thus ideas explored in one picture can stimulate the development of others, and familial connections between pictures evolve, particularly in the exploration of vibrant color and vigorous draftsmanship. This newest body of work is replete with potential and possibilities, and all at once an exciting new artistic landscape presents itself.

Mark Sharp

Resumé

Solo & Two Person Exhibitions2016 Walter Wickiser Gallery, New York, NY, Two Person Exhibition Armstrong Gallery, Saugatuck, MI, Solo Exhibition The Rensselaer Newman Foundation Chapel & Cultural Center, Troy, NY, Solo Exhibition2014 363 Gallery, Memphis, TN, Solo Exhibition2013 Black Rock Center for the Arts, Georgetown, MD, Three Person Exhibition2012 Edward Williams Gallery, Hackensack NJ, Solo Exhibition2011 Barrett Fine Art Gallery, Utica College, NY, Solo Exhibition Ezair Gallery, Long Island, NY, Two Person Exhibition2009 Ezair Gallery, New York, NY, Two-Person Exhibition2008 Walter Wickiser Gallery, New York, NY, Two-Person Exhibition2007 Walter Wickiser Gallery, New York, NY, Two-Person Exhibition2006 Concordia University, River Forest, IL, Solo Exhibition University of Illinois at Chicago, IL, Solo Exhibition2004 4 Star Gallery, Indianapolis, IN, Solo Exhibition, Oak Park Public Library, Oak Park, IL, Solo Exhibition2001 Harrison Street Gallery, Oak Park, IL, Solo Exhibition Concordia University, River Forest, IL, Solo Exhibition Terra Incognito, Oak Park, IL, Two-person Exhibition

Group Exhibitions2016 Shanghai Art Fair, Studio 26 Gallery, New York, NY Studio 26 Gallery, New York, NY Art Miami New York, Studio 26 Gallery, New York, NY2015 Walter Wickiser Gallery, New York, NY, Gallery Artists 2014 Circa Gallery, Minneapolis, MN, Summer Salon Walter Wickiser Gallery, New York, NY, Gallery artists Part XI Walter Wickiser Gallery, New York, NY, Non Objectivity II LA Art Show, Walter Wickiser Gallery. New York2013 Walter Wickiser Gallery, New York, NY, “New Abstractionists Part VII” Art Palm Beach, Walter Wickiser Gallery, New York, NY Houston Fine Art Fair, Walter Wickiser Gallery, New York, NY Art Miami, Walter Wickiser Gallery, New York, NY2012 Art Hamptons, Walter Wickiser Gallery, New York, NY Walter Wickiser Gallery, New York, NY, GAP IX, Group Show Toronto International Art Fair, Walter Wickiser Gallery, New York, NY2011 Walter Wickiser Gallery, New York, NY, “New Abstractionists Part V” Toronto International Art Fair, Walter Wickiser Gallery, New York, NY2010 Toronto International Art Fair/Walter Wickiser Gallery Walter Wickiser Gallery, New York, NY Art Chicago/Walter Wickiser Gallery Gallery 25, Fresno, CA Center For The Arts, Manassas, VA2009 Toronto International Art Fair/Walter Wickiser Gallery Alain Prillard Gallery, Saint-Cirq LaPopie, France “New Members Show”, Gallery 10, Inc., Washington, DC Gallery 10, Inc., Washington, DC

Mark Sharp

Resume (continued)2008 Toronto International Art Fair/Walter Wickiser Gallery “Gallery Artists”, Walter Wickiser Gallery, New York, NY Red Dot Fair, New York, NY/Walter Wickiser Gallery2007 Art Now Fair, Miami Beach/Walter Wickiser Gallery Walter Wickiser Gallery, New York, NY2004 Art Center of Northern New Jersey, 13th National Juried Show, Juror: Susan Cross, Associate Curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NYC Pleiades Gallery of Contemporary Art, New York, NY, 22nd Annual Juried Exhibition, Juror: Tracey Bashkoff, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NYC2002 National Small Works Painting Exhibition, Avenue Art Gallery, Endicott, New York Chicago Artists’ Coalition in cooperation with the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and the School of the Art Institute, Chicago, Illinois Best of Recent Works, Oak Park Art League, Oak Park, Illinois, Group Exhibition2001 Harrison Street Gallery, Oak Park, Illinois, Group Exhibition Chicago Artists’ Coalition in cooperation with the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and the School of the Art Institute, Chicago, IllinoisResumé continued

Collections Hope College, Holland, Michigan, Music DepartmentEnglish Language Academy, DePaul University, Chicago, ILConcordia University, (commission), River Forest, ILDuda Morcos & Associates, Chicago, ILWilson • Hart • Bausback, Slingerlands, NYCaptive Resources, LLC, Schaumburg, IL

Bibliography Brochure Essay, Jonathan Goodman, 2014Brochure Essay, Peter Frank, 2013Brochure Essay, Jonathan Goodman, 2011Brochure Essay, Dominique Nahas, 2011Essay, John Mendelsohn, 2010Press Release, November 2009, “Musical Variations”, Ezair Gallery, NY, Robert MahoneyNY Arts Magazine, September / October, 2007, “Orchestrated Surfaces”, Koan Jeff BaysaPress Release, May 2007, “Musical Abstraction”, Walter Wickiser Gallery, NY, Jonathan Goodman CULTURE VULTURE, February 25 - March 3, 2004The Indianapolis Star, February 29, 2004Pioneer Press, Oak Leaves, January 14, 2004Brochure Essay, William Zimmer, 2003

Agency & Gallery Representation Katharine T. Carter & Associates, Kinderhook, NYCIRCA Gallery, Minneapolis, MN

EducationHope College, Holland, MIUniversity of Michigan, School of Art, BFA, Ann Arbor, MI

Mark Sharp

Exhibition Fact SheetMark Sharp

When an artist of profound experience reaches a crossroads in his work, as Mark Sharp did at the beginning of this year, he immediately recognizes it. What is truly remarkable is how radically Sharp adapted his practice in response.

Though it is clearly the same artistic sensibility that underpins the collaged pictures that Sharp has been making for the last several months, the shift in approach from his previous work affects the most basic principles of his art. While the earlier pictures were predicated upon invention, this new work is founded in discovery: whereas the carefully interlocking brushed ovoids in his previous pictures were conjured from Sharp’s interior reality, pictorial elements are now encountered in the physical materials from which the pictures are crafted. This is all the more apparent because these materials are drawn from realms beyond those we normally encounter in sophisticated abstract art. Alongside fabric painted in a whole range of ways, Sharp adds sections that are immediately identifiable as pieces cut and torn from towels, shirts, or blue jeans.

NUMBER OF OBJECTS: 33 multi media works on canvas.

TITLES, DATES, SIZES, MEDIUM: Provided on PDF Presentation; additional work also available.

SPACE REQUIREMENTS: 125-200 running feet

PARTICIPATION FEE: Round-trip shipping, wall-to-wall insurance (50% of retail value), and color exhibition announcement card (with a $200 credit from Katharine T. Carter & Associates.)

INSTALLATION: Standard hook and eye with wire.

TRANSPORTATION: The exhibiting institution will provide all transportation for the exhibition and cover all related costs. This will include full responsibility for delivery at the conclusion of the exhibition. Work must be fully insured during transport.

ANNOUNCEMENT CARDS: Katharine T. Carter & Associates will provide a $200 credit towards the production of a color announcement card pending the terms from the sample letter of confirmation.

PRESS KIT: All pre-written press materials, to include biographical summary, artist statement, petite essay, press releases, media releases, pitch letters and radio/television spots, to be provided by Katharine T. Carter & Associates. All publicity releases, invitations/announcements, catalog, exhibition brochure, and other printed materials concerning the exhibition shall carry the following information: “The exhibition was organized through Katharine T. Carter & Associates.” Copies of any printed matter relating to the exhibition shall be sent to Katharine T. Carter & Associates at the close of the exhibition. The critics’ essay may be quoted provided there is attribution.

CONDITIONS: 1. Exhibiting institution must provide object insurance to cover replacement costs should items be damaged or stolen while on premises. Minimum insurance required: 50% retail value. Should loss, damage or deterioration be noted at the time of delivery of the exhibition, the artist shall be notified immediately. If any damage appears to have taken place during the exhibition, the artist shall be informed immediately.

2. Security: Objects must be maintained in a fireproof building under 24-hour security. 3. All packing and unpacking instructions sent by (artist) shall be followed explicitly by competent packers. Each object shall be handled with special care at all times to ensure against damage or deterioration. 4. As stated above (see space requirements), the number of works to be exhibited can be dictated by the space and needs of the exhibiting institution.

5. Exhibitors may permit photographs of the exhibition and its contents for routine publicity and educational purposes only. Exceptions may be made pending discussion with the artist.

CANCELLATION: Any cancellation of this exhibition by the hosting institution, not caused by the actions of the artist, shall entitle Katharine T. Carter and Associates to an award of liquidated damages of $3750.00. The hosting institution further agrees that any suit brought to recover said damages may only be brought in Columbia County, New York.

Contact and additional information: Katharine T. Carter 518-758-8130Katharine T. Carter & Associates fax 518-758-8133P. O. Box 609, Kinderhook, NY 12106-0609 [email protected]

Exhibition Fact SheetMark Sharp

For exhibition inquiries contact Katharine T. Carter & Associates

Email: [email protected]

Phone: 518-758-8130

Fax: 518-758-8133 Mailing Address:

Post Office Box 609Kinderhook, NY 12106-0609

Website: http://www.ktcassoc.com

mark sharp

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