Mark Francis
Kerlin Gallery is pleased to present Acoustic Oceans, an exhibition of new paintings on canvas, aluminium and paper by Mark Francis.
Mark Francis has long made paintings driven by the revelatory insights of contemporary science. This new body of work responds to the speed and complexity of the information age, interpreting data and binary sequences as pulsating bands of colour that stimulate the eye. Vertical stripes in rich tones pulse into one another, creating a sense of movement and vibrational energy that expands outwards beyond the picture plane. Francis sees each hue and line in his paintings as information for the viewer to decode – abstract forms that take us on a subconscious journey of understanding through sensory experience.
Sound is also a key component of these new paintings, and gives the exhibition its title, Acoustic Oceans. Taking sound as a universal language, Francis describes the construction of his paintings as ‘like an improvised abstract noise’ that can be both ‘melodic and chaotic’. For the artist, sound transforms into colour, and can ‘reflect the diverse emotions and experiences that shape our understanding of the universe’.
Subtonic
2024
oil on aluminium
122 x 153 cm / 48 x 60.2 in
Mark Francis
Dakota Sound 2, 2024
oil on paper
63 x 96 cm / 24.8 x 37.8 in paper size
70 x 102.5 cm 27.6 x 40.4 in framed
Mark Francis
Dakota Sound 3, 2024
oil on paper
63 x 96 cm / 24.8 x 37.8 in paper size
70 x 102.5 cm 27.6 x 40.4 in framed
about the artist
MARK FRANCIS
b. 1962, Newtownards, Northern Ireland. Lives and works in London, UK
Filled with a sense of movement and vibrational energy, Mark Francis’s paintings combine electric colour contrasts with dynamic patterns and precise brushwork. Fields of colour are shot through with orbs or pulsating linear forms that dissolve or disintegrate, mimicking streams of light, sonic vibrations, or graphs of seismic patterns. 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.
Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin, 2008
Mark Francis’s work has been exhibited at MoMA PS1, Brooklyn Museum and Albright-Knox Art Gallery, New York; Tate, Whitechapel Gallery, Design Museum, and the Royal Academy, London; The Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin; Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki; Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland; Pinakothek der Moderne, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart and Hamburger Bahnhof, Germany. Collections include Tate, 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.
Current and forthcoming exhibitions include Acoustic Oceans, Kerlin Gallery, Dublin (Solo, 12 July – 24 August) and Collecting Contemporary, British Museum, London, UK (Group, 25 April – 29 September). Recent exhibitions include Love for Detail, a three-person exhibition at Kunsthalle Darmstadt, Germany (2024); Re-Echo, a solo exhibition at Palazzo Collicola Spoleto, Italy; UNKNOWN-KNOWN, Kunstmuseum Appenzell, Switzerland (both 2022); MULTILAYER/Vision, Museum Wilhelm Morgner, Soest, Germany travelling to Schloss Plüschow, the Mecklenburgische Künstlerhaus, Germany; Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens, Penzance/ Cornwall, UK and Vasarely Museum, Budapest, Hungary (2020).
