 stills from "I can't see" (Twisted), 1999/2004 Mark Dean Disco Maquette Mark Dean predominantly works by culling information from previously existing cultural material - films, literature, and popular music - to create his work. To Dean, the original form and narrative of these sources is not something that determines his work. Some viewers will recognise the fragments of songs, the faces of actors, or the culled quotes; and some will not. Instead, Dean treats them like raw material. He samples tiny moments of information and weaves them together, mutating and interrelating disparate sources using coincidental linkages and similarities to generate new structures. Dean uses an explicitly mechanical vocabulary to create his work, but the results are as strangely affecting as they are mathematical in construction. He frequently references heightened states - fear, powerlessness, revulsion, ecstasy - but distends them, at once negating their sense of narrative agency whilst multiplying their temporal potency to present the viewer with hypnotic continuums that tap directly into our emotional and psychological landscapes. "Disco Maquette" conjures up the idea of both remixes and sculptural models. The exhibition comprises three new works - some of which remix material that previously existed as single-screen videos - especially constructed by Dean to respond to the specificity of the projection configuration at sketch. But rather than utilising the wide-screen format that is integrated into sketch's Kubrick-esque interior, Dean has chosen to trade its inherent polish for a more intrusive idea of scale, showing the works in 4:3 academy ratio so that they spill untidily out of their expected frame to encroach on the high-backed benches, the tops of doors and other architectural details. It is a gesture that seems to amplify the suspect atmosphere that permeates the looped triumvirate of triptychs Dean has constructed from Heavy Metal and Punk songs, B-movies, Hollywood classics and German cinema. The three video works in the exhibition are: "I Can't See" (Twisted), 1999/2004, "Intersection" (53 rd & 3rd x 3), 2003/2004, and "Go Together" (Grace), 1997/2004. Although separate works and in themselves not narrative in nature, in "Disco Maquette" Dean's three pieces build into a peculiar and rather desolate suggestion of our need for connection and our inability to find it told through the composite characters he skilfully fashions from the second-hand. Mark Dean is currently exhibiting in "Planet B", Palais Thurn und Taxis and Magazin 4 in Bregenz, Austria; and "Game On", Tri Postal, Lille, a Barbican Art Gallery International Touring Exhibition. In November, he will be participating in "Love Story", Danielle Arnaud Gallery, London. Curator: Alexandre Pollazzon Exhibition: 23 July - 11 September 2004 Open to the public: Tue-Sat 10am - 5pm By reservation: Mon-Sat 7pm - 2am the gallery sketch 9 Conduit Street GB-London W1S 2XG Telephone +44 0870 770 6515 Fax +44 (0) 20 7629 1684 Email gallery@sketch.uk.com www.sketch.uk.com |
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