Beschreibung:

MARK FRANCIS (b.1962) Critical Mass III Oil on canvas, 167.6 x 111.8cm Signed, inscribed and dated 2007 verso Now London-based, Mark Francis from Newtownards, Co Down, has exhibited internationally, and his work has been acquired by, among others, New Yorks Metropolitan Museum of Art, Machida Museum, Tokyo, Londons Tate Britain, Museum of Modern Art, Miami, IMMA and the Hugh Lane, Crawford Municipal Art Gallery, Cork. At thirty-three, he was named an emerging artist in The Adventure of Painting at Kunstverein Düsseldorf/Stuttgart. That painting is an adventure, in Franciss case, is entirely fitting. As a boy, Mark Francis loved rock pools, birds eggs, dry rot fungus and his early work was inspired by the natural world. I painted landscape and became disillusioned with that and had to find a different way to get inspired again. Nature and science combined informed Franciss mature work and where life begins, in spores, chromosomes, sperm, ova, he found his subject matter. Bacteria also played its part. What he saw close-up though a microscope inspired him; recent work explores and draws its inspiration from how radio telescopes chart far-off, cosmic zones. But for Francis the grid has always been there; he was always very interested in networks, mapping and from micro to macro the universe has become for him a pivotal point for exploration. From rock pool to universe, to cosmos. I always wonder what the edge of the universe is like and now, by means of radio telescopes that are pointing to the skies continuously listening for sounds, the data gathered is his starting point. It could be that the sound of a distant star that exploded millions of years ago is now reaching us. We are only now hearing them. In painting sound waves, DNA structures, Francis paints what the eye can not see. What the viewer does see is the artists imagined response to these complexities and structures and [t]he grid is probably, for me, the most, sort of, universal image, which shows how everything in the universe could be connected. So within this imaginary grid you can get notions of order from chaos in what Francis calls the extended field. Patterns play a very important part in most of my paintings and this can be seen in the vibrant, rhythmic Critical Mass III, with its field of vertical lines with forms placed on top. The horizontal and the vertical draw on the grid but the image is sensuous and complex, uniform and random. Its beautifully ordered. Black circular and elliptical shapes of different sizes dance against a luminous red background with its thin vertical lines, blurred, faint horizontals. The ordered, lower section connects with the upper one the thin lines continue downwards, change colour conveying a more open network. We are seeing, in Franciss words, things you cant see but can be relayed through critical apparatus and his belief that Everything that happens within the universe, whatever happens here to towards the end of the star system is all sort of connected, interconnected. Though an abstract artist, abstraction, here, is closely connected with the conduits that connect everything in the universe and in Critical Mass III, Mark Francis has made an absorbing, engaging and radiant work. Niall MacMonagle, 2019 MARK FRANCIS (b.1962) Critical Mass III Oil on canvas, 167.6 x 111.8cm Signed, inscribed and dated 2007 verso Now London-based, Mark Francis from Newtownards, Co Down, has exhibited internationally, and his work has been acquired by, among others, New Yorks Metropolitan Museum of Art, Machida Museum, Tokyo, Londons Tate Britain, Museum of Modern Art, Miami, IMMA and the Hugh Lane, Crawford Municipal Art Gallery, Cork. At thirty-three, he was named an emerging artist in The Adventure of Painting at Kunstverein Düsseldorf/Stuttgart. That painting is an adventure, in Franciss case, is entirely fitting. As a boy, Mark Francis loved rock pools, birds eggs, dry rot fungus and his early work was inspired by the natural world. I pa