Mark Schoening
Tetrishead, acrylic, latex, ink, carbon transfer, spray paint, and resin on panel 16″ x 20″ 2011
Legions, acrylic, latex, ink, carbon transfer, spray paint, and resin on panel 32″ x 25″ 2011
Untitled, acrylic, latex, ink, carbon transfer, spray paint, and resin on panel 16″ x 20″ 2010
The Stadium acrylic, latex, ink, carbon transfer, spray paint, and resin on pane 22″ x 25 1/2″ 2010
Untitled, acrylic, latex, ink, carbon transfer, spray paint, and resin on panel 10″ x 8″ 2010
Untitled, acrylic, latex, ink, carbon transfer, spray paint on panel 24 ” x 30 ” 2009
Artist Statement
My friend, six months of a beard upon his face, had just flown back from Georgia, the last stop after hiking the entire Appalachian Trail. I picked him up at the airport and, after the hug, the small talk, after the moments when he had my eyes to concentrate upon, the fear set in, the anxiety; I watched his head snap to attention at the slightest movement. To me, it was the usual airport motion. To him, it was as if he saw strangers firing shotguns at the ceiling. The barrage was too much, the information, the quick succession, and for the week he stayed in my apartment I would often catch him with his eyes closed dreaming far off dreams back toward desolation.
I do not have the luxury of escape. In this century, in this moment, few of us do. Information piles up: the advertisements, the mechanisms, the media, the people. I am attached to it, in the midst of it, a part of it. However, as a painter, I am also a witness and a reactionary. My paintings are manifestations of the same barrage my friend shied away from. The paintings speak of information explosions, where an entire environment can be physically contained in a seamlessly presented two-dimensional world. It is a reaction to the age of technology we find ourselves living in. The way we look at, perceive, and process ideas has changed, and because of that, because of what the viewer brings to the experience, these paintings could not have been created in any other time. This is not so much a comment on myself as it is the viewer. They now have the ability to take in numerous ideas and aesthetic techniques all at once as a consequence of their everyday lives. What I am doing is letting the ideas fall in a frozen plane, allowing for further investigation.
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