Mark Booth
April 9 - May 22, 2010
Schalter is pleased to announce piercednightstarvoice by Chicago based artist Mark Booth. The exhibition consists of three components: wall based text pieces, text drawings, and a two channel audio work. The work has been created specifically for presentation at Schalter.
Mark Booth’s spontaneously composed drawings and paintings often employ evocative fragments of narrative language and phrases such as A CATEGORY OF FLAMES SUCH AS THE CATEGORY OF TALKING FLAMES OR NON-TALKING FLAMES, or SMALL RINGING TEETH. At times, the texts have appeared in groups like speech balloons bubbling up, or as isolated idioms framed in bold colors. They are at once abstract and immediate, referring to what often feels unreal in vivid, concrete detail, and allow for error and slippage, including blackened out letters and awkward breaks of the line. The wall texts at Schalter form part of a larger series of flora and fauna pieces, obliquely exploring the subject of man and nature in hand-cut adhesive vinyl.
The audio work, In the event that the stag horn fern becomes metallic and that each of its bifurcating leaves rings like a tuning fork, is a knowingly unsatisfactory attempt to approximate a cicada song. The artist, through the use of prepared acoustic guitar and voice, attempts to emulate the droning swells of sound produced by this insect. Guitar strings were set into continuous vibration by electronic devices, and the resulting drones were interrupted and altered by various objects. These rhythms and drones are accompanied by "uvular trills", vocal sounds which are soft clicks and vibrations produced in the back of the human throat. The piece explores the desire of being what one is not, specifically one of the artist’s favorite sound-producing insects.
Throughout his practice, Booth’s work privileges the creative and play, inviting himself and his audience to experience other forms of aesthetic experience and indulging our capacity for amusement and wonder. His texts and audio similarly allow a sense of awe, implying permission through their improvisational all-inclusiveness. Within Booth’s work lies an insistent non-hierarchical gesture, offering the viewer possibility instead of interpretation and generosity instead of prescriptive readings.
Mark Booth is an audio artist, interdisciplinary artist, performer, and writer whose work is rooted in an exploration of language, sound, and the complexities of perception. He has performed and exhibited in the United States, Europe, and Scandinavia. He teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Booth's work is represented by Dan Devening Projects and Editions in Chicago.
