MARK FRANCIS

Mark Francis has long made paintings driven by the revelatory insights of contemporary science. This new body of work responds to the speed and complexity of the information age, interpreting data and binary sequences as pulsating bands of colour that stimulate the eye. Vertical stripes in rich tones pulse into one another, creating a sense of movement and vibrational energy that expands outwards beyond the picture plane. Francis sees each hue and line in his paintings as information for the viewer to decode – abstract forms that take us on a subconscious journey of understanding through sensory experience.

Sound is also a key component of these new paintings, and gives the exhibition its title, Acoustic Oceans. Taking sound as a universal language, Francis describes the construction of his paintings as ‘like an improvised abstract noise’ that can be both ‘melodic and chaotic’. For the artist, sound transforms into colour, and can ‘reflect the diverse emotions and experiences that shape our understanding of the universe’.

Mark Francis’s work has been exhibited at MoMA PS1, Brooklyn Museum and Albright-Knox Art Gallery, New York; Tate, Whitechapel Gallery, Design Museum, and the Royal Academy, London; The Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin; Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki; Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland; Pinakothek der Moderne, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart and Hamburger Bahnhof, Germany. Collections include Tate, V&A, London; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco; Museum of Modern Art, Miami and the Saint Louis Art Museum, Missouri.

Current and forthcoming exhibitions include Acoustic Oceans, Kerlin Gallery, Dublin (Solo, 12 July – 24 August) and Collecting Contemporary, British Museum, London, UK (Group, 25 April – 29 September). Recent exhibitions include Love for Detail, a three-person exhibition at Kunsthalle Darmstadt, Germany (2024); Re-Echo, a solo exhibition at Palazzo Collicola Spoleto, Italy; UNKNOWN-KNOWN, Kunstmuseum Appenzell, Switzerland (both 2022); MULTILAYER/Vision, Museum Wilhelm Morgner, Soest, Germany travelling to Schloss Plüschow, the Mecklenburgische Künstlerhaus, Germany; Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens, Penzance/ Cornwall, UK and Vasarely Museum, Budapest, Hungary (2020).