The Kerlin Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings by Mark Francis, from November 24, 2000 - January 6, 2001.

Mark Francis, born in Northern Ireland in 1962, is one of a number of young London-based artists who came to prominence during the 1990s, and his work is held in many public and private collections including the Tate Gallery, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin.

Francis became known for his mesmerising paintings derived from microscopic photography of bacteria, cells and chromosomes, abstracted in rhythmic patterns, graceful loops and grids or pulsating compressed clusters. In recent years the work has gradually moved away from the original cellular patterns to the present point where , in many cases, it is free of any easily recognisable source material. Now Francis challenges his own obsessive taste for order with sinuous, interweaving contour lines whose underlying structures seem threatened by some internal meltdown. Floating between the polarities of structure and disintegration, both literal and metaphorical, Francis indulges his new found freedom, underpinning the tenuous balance with a rare talent for form and colour.

Important recent exhibitions include Sensation - Saatchi Collection, Royal Academy of Art, London & Museum fur Gegenwart, Berlin; Zero Zero Four Four, PS.1 New York and Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo; Postmark: An Abstract Effect, Site Santa Fe, New Mexico and the major solo exhibition earlier this year at Milton Keynes Gallery, London. His work can currently be seen in 'Shifting Ground' at the Irish Museum of Modern Art.