contactprojectjournal the space between us.

The distance between lots of love and all my best, Copyright Mark Joshua Epstein, Courtesy of the artist

IN THE WORDS OF THE ARTIST

These recent collages are a new part of my practice. They’re different from paintings, my paintings anyways. They operate from a different vantage point and with a wholly different set of rules. 

The collages function as shorthand, intuitive formations created of forms that arrive bearing their own history, their own story. Making a painting that reads as both intricate and casual is, for me, nearly impossible—but with collage, when the pattern or color is preexisting, forms can be fluid and choices immediate. 

The pleasure of making all of these works, and often the frustration as well, is that they reveal themselves to me as they are constructed. Each element remains itself, things touch and often obfuscate one another, but remain whole…never blending. 

Formal decisions have political ramifications—who decides the meaning of a form or a composition? Viewers see a work that I meant to be abstract and there are natural associations made. Squares become boxes become buildings become cells. The fact that these associations vary from person to person is the context, the history and the politics of abstraction. The historical binary of formal and conceptual is bullshit, this is central to my practice.

About MARK JOSHUA EPSTEIN

Mark Joshua Epstein is a Brooklyn based maker of paintings, collages and animations. He is also the founder of One Night Stands, a bimonthly art party wherein participants focus on one piece, by one artist, for one night. Recent shows include The New Intimists at Nurtureart, Brooklyn and Space Series #1 at TrueSilver Union, San Francisco. He has been an artist in residence at the Jentel Foundation, Klondike Institute for Arts and Culture and the Macdowell Colony, amongst others.