Mark Francis

On Friday, November 16, Galerie Thomas Schulte will open its second extensive solo exhibition of recent paintings by Mark Francis. The opening reception will be held from 7 to 9pm. The artist will be present.

Mark Francis's works play with a visual reality that sways between painterly process and an imaginary spatiality and motifs borrowed from microscopic images of fine organic material, graphic registrations of sound waves, and other similar scientific representations. Francis developed this significant painterly style in the 1990s. Although quite distant to other "young British artists" in terms of his content, he is one of the most important figures of this important period of breakthrough. Consequently, he was presented to the Berlin audience already in 1998 at the Hamburger Bahnhof showing of the "Sensation" exhibition.

Mark Francis' paintings are originally based on microbiological models of cell structures and bacteria. They determine the structure of his images and open compositions. The softness of his "wet on wet" technique lets the visual objects almost disappear beneath the surface of his paintings, relegating more strictly clinical connotations to the background. In this way, Mark Francis' technique is occasionally reminiscent of the painterly approach of Gerhard Richter. In recent years, Francis has refined his style. The motifs are now more self-referential, and compositional and color aspects have moved to the foreground. At the same time, Francis also uses additional motivic sources, lending the paintings a more filigree quality.