Calvin Marcus at Peep-Hole, 20 Nov 2015 — 23 Jan 2016
Exhibitions

Calvin Marcus at Peep-Hole

Peep-Hole presents Calvin Marcus at Peep-Hole, the first solo exhibition in Italy by Calvin Marcus.

The numerous visual languages that Calvin Marcus approaches in his artistic practice reveals a process fueled by constant evolution, where a general sense of openness coexists with a quest for meticulous, research-based conclusions that engage a critical sensitivity to material, technique and form. Marcus deftly employs a wide range of traditional materials and techniques—including drawing, oil painting, ceramics, and metalwork—testing their potential through concentrated shifts in scale and context.

His work frequently gazes back onto itself, reflecting upon the narcissistic nature that often accompanies the production of art objects. The concept of identity is a central subject of his analysis, which moves from direct references to the artist himself, the routines of an artistic practice, and the conditions that govern an aesthetic experience. The reiteration of his own physical image via the motif of the self-portrait, a subject of which appears compulsively throughout his work, exhibits Marcus’s interest in questions of selfhood and the ability to negotiate oneself between private and public space.

The same themes are also central to the exhibition that he has conceived for Peep- Hole, where a group of formally diverse works collectively render questions of perception, imitation, and desire, as well as the distance between the public dimension of the exhibition context and the intimate, private, and even domestic space of the artist’s personal sphere. Here, small ceramic plates with anthropomorphic fish, a series of repetitive, sketch-like self-portraits in oil paints that match the consistency and hue of Crayola crayons, and a single stainless steel sculpture engulfed in live flames based on a downsized model of the artist’s studio in Los Angeles. In accordance with such juxtapositions and alignments, the exhibition leap between moods, mingling feelings of consolation, risk, and fear within a larger field in which humor, pathos, the grotesque and the ordinary incessantly alternate and overlap.

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