Hugh Lane Gallery is delighted to present Pulse, an exhibition of recent work by Mark Francis. Francis (b.1962) is inspired by computer technology, cosmology, quantum physics, information theory, genetics, natural history, and other sets of current scientific visual languages. His sophisticated visual language responds directly to the world and also engages with the history of abstract painting.
Mark Francis rose to prominence in the early 90s with abstract paintings that draws on the scientific imagery made available to us by to the invention and advancement of the electron microscope – hazy images of spores and sperm moving across the surface of the painting. Increasingly his paintings were structured by conscious concern with the grid, suggestive of networks, maps, and transport systems. His range of source material has broadened; the study of fungi, maps, and stars are among the interests that feed into his ongoing exploration of the relationship between the man-made and the natural. Pulse features new and recent works and is centred on a series of large diptychs, Timbre. In this series graph-like forms, reminiscent of the readings of an earth tremor or heartbeat, vibrate across a template of thin vertical lines. Sound is powerfully made visible.
Pulse is the first exhibition of Mark Francis’ paintings in Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane. The Gallery is pleased to present this new body of work as part of the Gallery’s centenary celebrations throughout 2008. The Municipal Gallery of Modern Art first opened in Clonmell House in Harcourt Street at 4pm on 20 January 1908. Pulse will begin the centenary programme by opening on 20th January 2008. The exhibition will tour to Galerie Stadtpark, Krems, Austria, in March 2008.
A richly illustrated monograph on Mark Francis with a foreword by Barbara Dawson will accompany the exhibition. Surveying Francis’ career over the past twenty years it is published by Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane in association with Lund Humphries.
-
Profile
Mark Francis was born in 1962 in Newtownards, County Down, and studied at St. Martins College of Art and Chelsea School of Art, London, in the 1980s. He had a highly acclaimed retrospective exhibition at Milton Keynes Gallery in 2000. He was included in the much-debated exhibition of art from the Saatchi Collection ‘Sensation’, at the Royal Academy in London and the Brooklyn Academy in New York in 1997. He has exhibited regularly at the Kerlin Gallery in Dublin. Other recent solo exhibitions include Gallery Thomas Schulte, Berlin, 2007, Gallery Forsblom, Helsinki and Galerie Wilma Lock St. Gallen, 2005, and Maureen Paley/Interim Art, London, 2004. He is represented in renowned international collections including Hugh Lane Gallery, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ulster Museum, Belfast, Tate, London, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Saatchi Collection, London, and Metropolitan Museum, New York.
Mark Francis, Timbre III, 2007. © the artist.
Mark Francis, Critical Mass III, 2007. © the artist.
Mark Francis, Critical Mass II, 2007. © the artist.
Mark Francis, Suppressor, 2007. © the artist.
Mark Francis, Aria II, 2007. © the artist.
Mark Francis, Aria III, 2007. © the artist.
Installation view of Mark Francis Pulse.
Installation view of Mark Francis Pulse.
Installation view of Mark Francis Pulse.
