Mark Sharp

When an artist of profound experience reaches a crossroads in his work, as Mark Sharp did at the beginning of this year, he immediately recognizes it. What is truly remarkable is how radically Sharp adapted his practice in response.

Though it is clearly the same artistic sensibility that underpins the collaged pictures that Sharp has been making for the last several months, the shift in approach from his previous work affects the most basic principles of his art. While the earlier pictures were predicated upon invention, this new work is founded in discovery: whereas the carefully interlocking brushed ovoids in his previous pictures were conjured from Sharp’s interior reality, pictorial elements are now encountered in the physical materials from which the pictures are crafted. This is all the more apparent because these materials are drawn from realms beyond those we normally encounter in sophisticated abstract art. Alongside fabric painted in a whole range of ways, Sharp adds sections that are immediately identifiable as pieces cut and torn from towels, shirts, or blue jeans.

This enhances the complexity of Sharp’s endeavor. His range of shapes explodes; rather than existing in purely pictorial space, their texture, their a...

Hope College, Holland, Michigan

University of Michigan, School of Art, BFA, Ann Arbor, Michigan

Solo & Two Person Exhibitions
2016 Walter Wickiser Gallery, New York, NY, Two Person Exhibition
Armstrong Gallery, Saugatuck, MI, Solo Exhibition
The Rensselaer Newman Foundation Chapel & Cultural Center
Troy, NY, Solo Exhibition
2015 Walter Wickiser Gallery, New York, NY, Two Person Exhibition
2014 363 Gallery, Memphis, TN, Solo Exhibition
2013 Black Rock Center for the Arts, Germantown, MD, Three Person Exhibition
2012 Edward Williams Gallery, Hackensack, NJ, Solo Exhibition
2011 Barrett Fine Art Gallery, Utica College, NY, Solo Exhibition
Ezair Gallery, Long Island, NY, Two Person Exhibition
2009 Ezair Gallery, New York, NY, Two Person Exhibition
2008 Walter Wickiser Gallery, New York, NY, Two Person Exhibition
2007 Walter Wickiser Gallery, New York, NY, Two Person Exhibition
2006 Concordia University, River Forest, Illinois, Solo Exhibition
University of Illinois at Chicago, Illinois, Solo Exhibition
2004 4 Star Gallery, Indianapolis, Indiana, Solo Exhibition,
Oak Park Public Library, Oak Park, Illinois, Solo Exhibition
2001 Harrison Street Gallery, Oak Park, Illinois, Solo Exhibition
Concordia University, River Forest, Illinois, Solo Exhibition
Terra Incognito, Oak Park, Illinois, Two-person Exhibition
Gro...