Elephunk Print

We're fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance. - Proverb from Tokushima Marc Chicoine is a visual artist and dancer born in the Bay Area of California. He received his BA from Chicago based Northwestern University in Cognitive Science and Communication. He then moved to NYC in order to pursue freestyle dance and further develop his creative ambitions. After designing within the education technology sector, Marc returned to school and received an MFA from the Pratt Institute. Marc's paintings focus on bodily narrative with heavy influence from his dance practice. Both technically informed and raw, his dry media, gouache, and oil pieces bridge the universal with the intimately psychological. Marc has exhibited across the United States. Showings include the Pratt Institute, Rhode Island Watercolor Society, Viridian Artists in Manhattan, and Attleboro Arts Museum, amongst others. In free time, Marc enjoys sharing on the dance floor. He is a long time practitioner of House dance and trained under first through third generation New York masters for 6 years. Marc believes that his movement practice is integral to his visual work, creatively, rhythmically, and gesturally. Both systems of expression bridge technical prowess with improvisation. "As a painter and freestyle dancer, my work is driven by an appreciation for corporeal experience and its possibilities for expression. Heavily inspired by embodied cognition and the research of pioneers such as George Lakoff, I believe that bodily narrative and sensorial perceptions are responsible for how we conceive of and engage with every aspect of our lives. Cognition, emotionality, and the metaphors we live by are all married to our bodies. When creating visual stories, be it with brush or on the dancefloor, I strive to bridge the universal with my own intimate psychosocial experiences. I aim to inspire viewers to consider how they ~wiggle~ through this life, and how seemingly isolating experiences may be vantage points for shared truths. I hope to peel away the divisive constructs we fashion around ourselves in order to reveal the shared patterns of experience and behavior at our core." -Marc Chicoine