- This event has passed.
New Babylon: Recent Work by John Westmark
November 6, 2015 - November 28, 2015
Opening reception: Saturday, November 7, 4-7pm
Artists Talk: Saturday, November 14, 11am
New Babylon: Recent Work by John Westmark is a collection of recent mixed media paintings and sculptures by Gainesville artist John Westmark. This exhibition presents the latest installment of the artist’s investigations into new concepts, materials, and techniques. The works included in this exhibition utilize Westmark’s signature saturated color palette and seemingly engineered use of space and line. This body of work focuses on contrast, perspective, and space to investigate the notion of place. Westmark’s use of visual cues suggesting mobility and motion begs the viewer to reconsider the cultural and social values assigned to one’s sense of place. Viewers will encounter two and three dimensional representations of mobile cities; some of which are structures that invite you to consider what the future may look like. Hydrator, for example, could be the ultimate survival vehicle for the human race.
Westmark’s works ooze with the straight, clean lines of 1960s modernism. In New Babylon: Recent Work by John Westmark, the artist has constructed a collection of mixed media artworks that he has dubbed the Superstructure Series. Viewers are certain to be drawn in by these works.
Westmark’s version of the future tethers to the whimsical. These superstructures are only seemingly engineered. Upon closer inspection, the structures do not represent mechanically sound devices. The pieces rely on human imagination. “This works asks you to suspend for a moment all practicality and consider a city untethered to terra firma, capable of moving on its own, dodging catastrophe or hunting new resources,” states Westmark.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
John Westmark’s work is exhibited widely and is held in collections worldwide. Westmark is the recipient of a the Pollock-Krasner grant, the Florida Individual Artist Fellowship and was selected as a finalist for the Arte Laguna Painting prize and exhibition in Venice, Italy in 2012. Westmark was also awarded The Gibbes Museum of Art (Charleston, SC) Factor Prize for Southern Art. John Westmark holds A BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA from the University of Florida.