October 26 - January 4, 2009 Gallery 4
Mark Booth continues to juxtapose art and language in this multi-disciplinary exhibition, Spanish Still Life or A Large List of Merged Animals. Sound, performance and projection are just some of the tools Mark Booth uses to dissect and restructure a 17th-century still life painting by Spanish artist Juan Sánchez Cotán into a dynamic installation. This project is presented in conjunction with the 2008 Outer Ear Festival of Sound, a program of Experimental Sound Studio , Chicago.
Booth aims to construct a sensory experience that liberates Cotán’s subjects of quince, cabbage, melon and cucumber and poetically embellishes them beyond recognition.
Spanish Still Life or A Large List of Merged Animals showcases a walk-in installation that seeks to provide a physical and psychological contemporary exploration of the Baroque painting Still Life with Game Fowl (1600/1603) by Juan Sánchez Cotán, currently in the collection of the San Diego Art Museum. The artwork includes a 2-channel digital projection, 2 metal panels in the dimensions of the original Cotan paintings being referenced and an 8 -channel audio component that, when combined, transfer an eerie still life painting into a multi-dimensional study of organizational strategies. Booth aims to construct a sensory experience that liberates Cotán’s subjects of quince, cabbage, melon and cucumber and poetically embellishes them beyond recognition. The result is a calendar of wild beasts and stimulated senses(for example, a sloth-toed cat or kisses that taste like boiled weeds) that, when spoken, immediately sends minds wandering a parallel universe.
Experimental Sound Studio is a nonprofit organization founded in 1986 and dedicated to the promotion, production, presentation, and preservation of innovative and diverse approaches to the sonic arts and to the integration of these art forms into the public.
Mark Booth has exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Hudson Franklin, New York; Tony Wight/Bodybuilder & Sportsman, Chicago; Chicago Cultural Center; and The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu, Hawaii, among other venues across the country. His audio and performance work has been presented at the Overgaden Sound Art Festival, Copenhagen; Openport Festival, Chicago; Lincoln Park Conservatory, Chicago; Nova Art Fair, Chicago; and the Outer Ear Festival of Sound, Chicago. Booth was commissioned to produce audio scores for Molly Shanahan/Mad Shak’s My Name is Blackbird, Chicago, and Eric Pold’s Success, Copenhagen. Booth received a B.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design and an M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he currently teaches creative writing, painting, and sound.
Image: © Mark Booth 2008. Original image: Juan Sánchez Cotán, Spanish, 1561-1627, Still Life with Game Fowl, 1600/1603, Oil on canvas, 26 11/16 × 34 15/16 in. (67.8 × 88.7 cm), Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Leigh B. Block, 1955.1203, The Art Institute of Chicago. Photography © The Art Institute of Chicago.