The destructive and regenerative aspects of nature are really compelling to me. There’s an amazing violence in a hurricane or an erupting volcano, and I don’t attribute any sort of morality or lack thereof to that force – it just is. It’s a regenerative process and I think there are positive things in these natural processes, even when they seem disastrous.
– Mark Licari
Honor Fraser is pleased to present an exhibition of new works by Mark Licari. This exhibition, entitled The Finishes That Stand The Test, marks the artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery and will include works on paper, sculpture and an expansive wall drawing.
Licari’s continued interest in the breakdown and disorder of materiality within the harsh natural world is apparent in this most recent body of work. Navigating through the artist’s extraordinary visual narratives of decaying domesticity and dark whimsy, one comes face to face with the battle of nature vs. the man-made. Working in multiple dimensions Licari often goes beyond the borders of sculpture and drawing and expands outside of the picture plane and onto the wall space, creating site-specific wall murals.
Ever apparent in this body of work is the notion of temporality as Licari begs the question: “In the end, what will stand the test of time?” Through this irreverent play of ordered chaos and domestic mayhem Licari pictures a series of man-made objects and environments. These objects – a dilapidated broken down bicycle, a crushed beer can, a tattered men’s suit bursting with sprouted flowers and weeds, decaying office furniture, a refrigerator run amok with putrid rotting food – all serve as signifiers of what is missing in each composition, man himself. In Licari’s work human presence is rare, if it even exists at all, yet the work is occupied by personifying possessions – signifiers of human existence and its neuroses. These uncanny juxtapositions illustrate the eccentric tensions between nature and technology while Licari’s raw energy unravels, exposing his fantastical world of pandemonium.
Mark Licari was born in Atlanta, Georgia. He has lived and worked in Los Angeles since completing his MFA at the University of Southern California in 2000. Licari has had solo exhibitions at The Monterey Museum of Art in Monterey, CA, Baldwin Gallery in Aspen, CO, Gagosian Gallery in Los Angeles, CA and his work has been included in a number of group exhibitions and public installations nationally. Mark Licari: Drawing With an Appetite, a 180-page catalogue of work with an introduction and interview by Kristine McKenna was published by Honor Fraser Gallery in 2006.