CONTEMPORARY ARTIST MARK MANN
Mark Elzey.
Okie by birth. New Yorker by choice. BFA from the College of Santa Fe. Over 20 years in Brooklyn. Currently renovating a barn in the Catskills. His practice: appropriating mid-20th century Americana and recontextualising borrowed memory.
Owen James Gallery, NYC
Greatest inspirations or influences?
American independent films of the 1970s — Five Easy Pieces, The Long Goodbye, Nashville, Scarecrow. It's the honesty and rawness of the human condition that interests me most, and I look to instil this feeling in my own work.
I have always been fascinated with the strangeness of our earliest memories. Work from this era is like some half-remembered world from childhood that I am trying to study and understand.
"A half-remembered world from childhood I am trying to study and understand."
— Mark Elzey
Tell us about your creative process.
My artistic process is one of appropriation and sampling imagery from mid-20th century Americana vacation scenes. I recontextualise these borrowed memories to reflect my own family history, while allowing others to internalise the open narrative for themselves.
The paintings are formal in nature, but there is a layering of applied colour and blurring of detail that results from generations of artifacts buried in a compressed digital file.
How did this year affect your creativity?
Studio life is already in tune with the pandemic in many ways — working in solitude is familiar to me. Most artists want extended time to work without interruption, so emotionally it wasn't difficult to manage.
Culturally, it really accelerated our time spent inhabiting virtual spaces. People are taking advantage of flexible work hours and remote places to live, but I am concerned we will lose some of the benefits of being present and engaging with the physical world as this continues.
Anderson
He has made some of the most iconic films of the past 25 years — hands down. His ability to flesh out compelling, dysfunctional characters across a variety of time periods and in such detail is impressive. Not many artists have found his balance of commercial and critical success.
What does wellbeing mean to you?
Wellbeing is being grateful each day that I can get up to work, play, make art and enjoy time with my friends. Getting outdoors is like a spiritual routine for me — it keeps me sane after the daily hustle of the city.
Owen James Gallery, NYC
Antakly Projects / Ninu Nina
(On the Rocks, 2019/21 40 x 30" acrylic on canvas).