Mark Francis

With only a cursory glance, Mark Francis’s paintings look abstract, built through sign and color. After closer observation, though, the origins of the work by this artist from Northern Ireland, who for years was a leading YBA figure, are revealed as completely different and in many ways unexpected. His art is directly inspired by the worlds of science, medicine, botany, and the natural sciences. The images are taken from microscopes; they are enlargements of what lies around us and for the most part goes unobserved. This exhibition contains roughly twenty works, on paper and on canvas, in which clearly delineated black marks are positioned against soft, blurred backgrounds built from skillful glazes. The depth of the exquisitely pictorial constructions seemingly refers to additional dimensions, a formal corollary to Francis’s conceptual investigations. These are microcosms in a profound and dense dialogue with the surrounding macrocosm, and they create sometimes-ambiguous relationships between vision and representation.

Translated from Italian by Marguerite Shore.