Recoil
Artist
Mark Francis
(b. 1962)
Date1997
MediumOil on canvas
Dimensions214 x 214 cm
ClassificationsPaintings
Credit LineCollection & image © Hugh Lane Gallery.
Purchased, 1998.
© Mark Francis.
Object number1953
DescriptionFascinated by the natural sciences in general, Mark Francis's studio could be mistaken for a laboratory with its images of plant, animal and human cells and their circulatory networks and his collection of diagrams and illustrations of various fungi and skin disorders. He is one of a number of artists of his generation for whom the electron microscope and advances in telescopic technology have provided a hitherto unavailable repertoire of images. This material forms an integral part of the artist's life and provides the inspiration for his paintings. Recoil arises out of works of the early 1990s in which networks of spores and sperm are painted with a limited palette and in a way that pitches the seductive qualities of paint against the objectivity of scientific observation. Painted "wet on wet", the resulting blur of the sperm-like forms suggests movement beyond the usual creative associations, a claustrophobic sense of genesis out of control, especially resonant in an age of genetic engineering and biological warfare. The grid, upon which Recoil's imagery floats, began to appear in Francis's work in the mid 1990's. Its presence reflects the artist's interest in man-made systems as a notional arbitrator between order and chaos and posits his art in the context of modernist abstraction. (CK)
On View
Not on view
Alphonse Legros
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