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Morning Star
Mark Harris

COUNTRY CLUB / CINCINNATI
AUGUST 13 – OCTOBER 2, 2010

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Country Club Cincinnati is pleased to present the solo exhibition Morning Star by Cincinnati-based artist Mark Harris. This exhibition continues Harris’s interest in historical socialist literature that engages with utopian ideals. It also re-engages a studio painting practice albeit one rooted in a certain type of conceptual anthropology.

In 1970 Dick Fairfield published “The Modern Utopian: Communes, U.S.A.,” a large-format book compiling three issues of his alternative press magazine on intentional communities. Most of the material in the book had been collected by Fairfield during journeys taken across the country in the late 60s. On account of its journalistic idiosyncrasies, the accompanying text, (combining verbatim interviews with personal opinions and summary histories of the communes), provides a vivid and unltered commentary on the ideals behind the commitments to alternative family structures and economic models that drove many of these initiatives. Black and white photographs taken by Fairfield, commune residents, and probably an occasional visiting photographer illustrate the book’s text. The majority of these images are unstaged photos of everyday recreational commune life. A few others show scenes of work, prayer, or moments of conflict with the local authorities that would sometimes close down communities for sanitation or public order violations.

For Morning Star, Harris has made pencil drawings and oil paintings derived from images in Fairfield’s “The Modern Utopian.” Morning Star is the name of one of the communes featured in these drawings and paintings. Harris writes “I imagine these works as a form of contemporary history painting. The drawings are detailed copies that enlarge black and white photos and text taken directly from pages of Fairfield’s book. The paintings are greatly enlarged color versions of artwork, made by commune residents, appearing in these photos. These labor-intensive drawings are on textured watercolor paper that influences their rendering. The oil paintings are made on linen on stretchers up to eight feet square. I intend the method of image-making and the materials used here as a homage to the ideals and challenging life of the communes. On the scale they are made, the pencil drawings allow an exacting interpretation of every detail of photographs that might otherwise be passed over in at a glance. I regard 60’s psychedelic imagery, and by extension the art made on these communes, as wish images that indirectly represent ideals that may have been unrealizable at the time. The paintings I have made for Morning Star are intended to salvage these images from obscurity and realize them as literally and completely as possible.”

Mark Harris lives and works in Cincinnati, Ohio where he is the Director of The School of Art at the University of Cincinnati. Harris has worked extensively as a critic, writer and curator in addition to his exhibition activities. Harris received his MA in painting from the Royal College of Art in London in 1982 and later received a PhD in Philosophy from Goldsmith’s College, University of London in 2006. Harris has been a critic for Art in America and Art Monthly. His work has been reviewed in such publications as The Guardian, Art in America, Village Voice, NY Arts, The New York Times, Flash Art, The Spectator, and The Chicago Tribune.

For additional information please contact:
information@countryclubprojects.com
t +1 323 658 8522

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