October 19 - November 24, 2007
Schalter is pleased to announce the project room's first one-person exhibition. The exhibition will present a series of new work by Berlin-based, English artist Mark Prince and features several large word paintings, which were tailored as a project for Schalter.
In his new series, Prince continues his long exploration of location, remembrance, abstraction, and language. Whereas his earlier word paintings employed the use of stencils and commercially available fonts, here the artist has chosen to develop the work out of handwriting. The turn to “hand” slows down the painting process and anatomizes the act of handwriting, allowing the slippages and glitches of the process to remain an integral element of the work.
Prince's work often hints at an obscure form of story telling or narrative. We are given the names of places, or invited to consider the process of writing as itself a record of time and event. And while the words in the paintings can be understood as a sequence of places in a journey, or a thread connecting different places, our attempts as viewers to pinpoint the concrete behind the work are continually thwarted.
An attention and concern for modernism is also present in the paintings. Whereas for many the notion of handwriting might smack as the ultimate form of signature or individual gesture, here the writing is rehearsed, practiced and coolly aestheticized. The paintings are precisely and superbly executed, however we sense that the artist's persona is not at stake in the work. And language, which can easily be regarded as accessible and immediate, is rendered opaque and misleading. What we are left with is the work, which may or may not lead us anywhere.
Mark Prince is originally from Manchester, England and moved to Berlin in 1999. His work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions across Europe. In addition to his studio practice, Prince has written for Art Forum and Frieze, and is a regular feature contributor to the UK art magazine Art Monthly. In Berlin, he is represented by Galerie Crone.
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