Mark Innerst
November 4 – December 18, 2010
DC Moore Gallery is pleased to announce that it is beginning its representation of Mark Innerst with an exhibition of new paintings and works on paper inspired by New York City, Philadelphia, and the beaches of Cape May, New Jersey. A full-color catalog with an essay by Michael Duncan is available.
Innerst transforms the urban landscape, investing it with a deeply resonant beauty and complexity. New York and Philadelphia appear alternately majestic, immense, and serene, as endless stretches of buildings morph into skyward-shooting lines or stacked, layered blocks of color. In work such as All the Above, the city appears organic and fluid, unfolding from within. Vanishing points slip off-center, crowded out by buildings that curve overhead and sweep downward to street level, where human activity is reduced to blurs of light and movement.
Paintings of the beaches and boardwalk of Cape May, New Jersey simmer with light and activity. Swaths of sun-drenched sand are riotous with colorful umbrellas, striped beach chairs, and crowds of people. Sunlight streams through clouds and reflects off water, suffusing beach and bathers alike in a hazy glow. Critic and curator Richard Milazzo writes of the evocative power of these paintings: “Subjective states of being are alluded to – conflicts and tumult, exuberance and pure joy, despair and hope – but through the objective conditions of bunched up clouds or skies that suddenly open out to the sun or the light….”
Innerst’s work is also remarkable for its exquisite technique and pristine surface, and each painting is completed with a distinctive, handmade frame. Though his paintings reference art historical traditions, writer Katherine Gass comments that: “Innerst has always approached the state of their being through contemporary eyes. It is a dual approach that comes from a bystander’s view of things and a keen eye for beauty, as seen through all of its post-Pop mediations and complications.”
Mark Innerst lives in Philadelphia, PA and Cape May, NJ. Recent exhibitions of his paintings have been presented at Alain Noirhomme Gallery, Brussels, Belgium (2008) and Galleria Mazzoli, Modena, Italy (2007). Innerst’s work is featured in numerous public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY; Albright Knox Museum, Buffalo, NY; and Indianapolis Museum of Art, IN.
