Instagram Takeover: Mark Dorf

Recent Foam Talent Winner, Mark Dorf, takes over our Instagram account, November 2017.

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Mark Dorf is a New York based artist whose creative practice employs a mixture of photography, digital media, and sculpture. In his most recent work, Dorf explores society’s perceptions of and interactions with the digital domain, urban and architectural environments, and the ‘Natural Landscape’.

With an interest in technology and science, he scrutinizes and examines the influence of the information age in order to understand our curious habitation of the 21st century world.

Dorf has exhibited internationally at Postmasters Gallery, New York, 2017, 2015; Galerie Philine Cremer, Dusseldorf, DE, 2016; Division Gallery, Toronto, 2015; Outlet Gallery, Brooklyn, 2015; The Lima Museum of Contemporary Art, Lima, 2014; Mobile World Centre, Barcelona, 2014; Harbor Gallery, New York, 2014; SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, 2013; and Phoenix Gallery, New York, 2012. Dorf’s work is included in the Fidelity Investments Collection, the Deutsche Bank Collection, and the permanent collection of the Savannah College of Art and Design.

@mrkdrf: Another piece from my series “Transposition” – A big part of the sculptural works are the structures that the photographs sit on. They all lean or are dependent upon the architecture in which they exist. They lean on the walls addressing there room that houses them, acknowledging the structures that support them: another metaphor for the codependence that exists between this categorical understanding of our world. Not only are these structures physically supported by the room in which they are presented, but the forms themselves are derived from architecture as well. They are meant to reflect aesthetics related to interior design and prefabricated furniture in order to link the materials that compose these consumer objects with the areas in which their components come from. ￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭ Landscape 15 2017 #markdorf #IGTakeover  #photography

A post shared by Photoworks (@photoworks_uk) on Nov 23, 2017 at 11:26am PST

@mrkdrf: In “Landscape 12”, the feeling of consumer objects becomes very present through the structure that the photographs and objects are presented on – the shelf itself, made from plywood and CNC milled out, is meant to reference mass produced interior design objects from the likes of IKEA revealing how materials from areas that lay outside of our urban centers come to be transposed into our material urban worlds. An object that is repeated throughout the sculptural works from “Transposition” is that of tempered glass: a material who’s makeup is derived again from materials that lay outside of our urban centers and is transformed into another that is made utilitarian for human use and consumption. In architecture it is a material that is mean to disappear in a sense. It is to create a transparent barrier, but it will never truly disappear despite its transparent qualities. It is revealed in it’s slight effects on color and light, when it is dirty the surface becomes revealed, and the reflective nature of the material further shows its presence. Additionally, glass is used in the majority of our screen based consumer technological products making glass a portal for us to travel through to our virtual environments that then continue to open up more windows to people, places, and events infinitely far away. ￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭ Landscape 12 2017 #markdorf #IGTakeover  #photography

A post shared by Photoworks (@photoworks_uk) on Nov 25, 2017 at 12:15pm PST

@mrkdrf here once again. This piece, Landscape “14”, like my previous post, also comes from my most recent body of work “Transposition” and was recently exhibited with @foam_amsterdam. It brings together a diverse group of materials that are again all derivative in either form, intended function, or aesthetic from these categories of “Nature,” urban architectural centers, and or our technological and virtual environments. Bringing all of these elements together (plywood, faux grass, faux rocks, fluorescent light, bottled water, sheets of bark, resin, printed digital imagery, house plants) a phrase is created that describes the vocabulary of our contemporary lives. A vocabulary that looks at the interconnectedness and complex ecology of our planet that includes not only those areas outside of our urban centers, but an all-encompassing system that we affect in our motions and are in turn affected by in the reciprocations of our actions. ￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭ Landscape 14 2017 #markdorf #IGTakeover  #photography

A post shared by Photoworks (@photoworks_uk) on Nov 21, 2017 at 9:17am PST

@mrkdrf here taking over Photoworks this week! This piece comes from my most recent series “Transposition.” In this series I look at the ways that humanity is drawn to categorize our existence in oppositions. We think of the world around us in binaries: landscape and city; digital and physical; chaos and harmony. In “Transposition,” I look to break these oppositions and archetypes down and reveal that the pieces that comprise our world (like “nature,” urban centers, and technological/virtual environments) are in fact codependent and coproductive of one another. • The works in “Transposition” don’t include subjects from these “categories”—they instead feature derivatives. Here, the viewer sees an image of a botanical garden, a “natural” space that is, in fact, man-made. Furthermore, the image has been mounted on plywood, an industrial building material that is used in the creation of our urban space. Plywood is derived from “nature,” but in its current form, it has little to do with the tree that it once was. All of these elements working together reveal that codependence and make a portrait of a space that sits between all of these “categories” while also revealing the transposition of material throughout them. ￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭￭ Landscape 09 2017 #markdorf @mrkdrf #IGTakeover  #photography

A post shared by Photoworks (@photoworks_uk) on Nov 20, 2017 at 5:34am PST

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