Mark Francis
Kerlin Gallery is pleased to announce Echo Vision, an exhibition of new and historic paintings by Mark Francis.
Bridging a span of thirty years, Echo Vision presents seven new paintings alongside three works dating from the 1990s, the era in which Francis first made waves with his powerful, optically intense paintings driven by the revelatory insights of contemporary science. By placing these two eras of painting in conversation with one another, Echo Vision traces a line through past and present and demonstrates the continued relevance of the artist’s enduring painterly concerns: sound, vibrations, networks, mapping, and virality.
Francis’s longstanding fascination and engagement with science provides rich territory for his painting, from the vast cosmic terrains of astronomy to the minute and molecular concerns of mycology. Making striking imagery out of what is normally invisible, he explores the visual worlds made accessible by electron microscopes, or sonic data gathered from outer space. But while the feats of manmade technology inform Francis’s work, the thing of wonder remains the unknowable quantities beyond their reach. This is what Francis uses his imaginative power and painterly skills to conjure – sparking a tension between order and chaos, knowledge and mystery that is at the heart of his work.
Echo Vision also marks the publication of a new monograph covering the period 2007–2021. The publication includes texts by Marco Tonelli, Barry Phipps, and Colm Tóibín. Beautifully illustrated with the artist’s work and published in 192-page hardback, it has an initial print run of 1000 copies. The publication will be launched during the opening reception for Echo Vision on Saturday 26 February 2022, from 12–3pm.
The monograph is also available in a Limited Edition of 25 copies with an original signed print (pictured) in a box with slipcase. To purchase, please contact Elly Collins, elly@kerlin.ie.
Mark Francis’s work has been exhibited at MoMA PS1, Brooklyn Museum; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, New York; Kunstmuseum St. Gallen; Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; Tate, London and Liverpool; Whitechapel Gallery, Design Museum, and the Royal Academy in London; The Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin; Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki; Kunstmuseum Stuttgart and Hamburger Bahnhof Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin. Recent and forthcoming solo exhibitions include Palazzo Collicola Spoleto, Italy (2022); Kerlin Gallery (2019) and Peninsula Arts Gallery, Plymouth University (2016); recent group exhibitions include Museum Wilhelm Morgner, Soest (2020, 2017); Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool and Kunsthalle Krems, Austria (both 2017). Francis’s work can be found in the collections of the Tate and the V&A, London; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco; Museum of Modern Art, Miami and the Saint Louis Art Museum, Missouri.
