Menu
The New Contemporary Art Magazine

The Vibrant 2D and 3D Work of Mark Whalen

Blending two- and three-dimensional forms, Mark Whalen creates cerebral and absurd arrangements of the human body. Whether stacking vibrant heads or using sculpted hands to sculpt the very shapes of canvases, there’s a metatextual component in tackling the act of creating art itself.

Blending two- and three-dimensional forms, Mark Whalen creates cerebral and absurd arrangements of the human body. Whether stacking vibrant heads or using sculpted hands to sculpt the very shapes of canvases, there’s a metatextual component in tackling the act of creating art itself.

“The generalized, gender-fluid figures who appears in the pictorial scenes and whose body parts are featured in the sculptures is not Whalen himself — or it’s not only him,” Over the Influence has said of his work. “The figure is an avatar for the broad spectrum of human experience. The seductive richness of the saturated palette and alluring surface treatments evokes a range of emotional responses to that life; and the ordinary found objects and minerals that surround, support, and oppress the persons in the compositions represent the profound absurdity of basically everything.”

Find more of Whalen’s work on his site.

Meta
Share
Facebook
Reddit
Pinterest
Email
Related Articles
Tracey Snelling's installations are immersive blends of sculpture, video, and photography, her makeshift buildings containing surprises in their windows and corners. Her recent, massive construction at the 58th Venice Biennale reflects on her experiences living in China, in particular. Videos shown within offer peeks into her experiences with friends; structures are inspired by actual places she visited.
We are what we eat- are we also what we play with? Australian artist Freya Jobbins asks questions about modern consumerism with her strange portraits made of doll parts. Her surrealist imagination has come up with busts of pop culture icons like Batman, Bart Simpson, and self portaits made of discarded Barbie legs. Jobbins' abstract way of seeing others is highly influenced by Italian Mannerist painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo. He famously painted images of gods and Roman emperors made up of objects like vegetables, fruits, and flowers. While very amusing, there's an incredible amount of detail and thought that goes into Jobbins' pieces.
Ceramicist Dirk Staschke, featured in HF Vol. 23, has meticulously studied Dutch and Flemish still life painting, specifically, the Vanitas genre, to create his work. Some of his new works for the "Nature Morte" exhibition at the American Museum of Ceramic Art (AMOCA) expose Staschke's hand-executed process, and we are finally able to see the creative thinking behind his disturbingly delicious imagery of florals and food tableaus.
John Bisbee, who welds and manipulates 12-inch spikes, has always operated under one mantra: "Only nails, always different." In recent pieces, his diverse output bends the nails into an enormous snake, a tree, and more abstract forms. Not only are the subjects depicted varying wildly, but the style in which the nails comprise them: sometimes rigid and geometric, elsewhere chaotic.

Subscribe to the Hi-Fructose Mailing List