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 selfportraits, 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, recalling the 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 the id 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 Neue Nationalgalerie 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. For MARK (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 enigmatic id 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’.
MARK WALLINGER MARK is a collaboration between Serlachius Museums, Mänttä,
The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh and Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee.
Louise Warmington, Press and Marketing Manager
P [email protected]
or call 0131 226 8182.
http://fruitmarket.co.uk
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 [email protected].
http://dca.org.uk
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.
We welcome 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.