Mark Alexander (painter)

Mark Alexander (born 1966) is a British artist living and working in Berlin.

For the nineteenth-century American lawyer, see Mark Alexander (politician).

Biography

Born in the small market town of Horsham, West Sussex, Alexander came to painting relatively late, receiving his BFA from Oxford University as a mature student in 1996, despite his lack of formal education or training.[1] Alexander was an artist in residence at the Beethoven Haus in Bonn, Germany (2014–15).

Alexander has nine of his works included in the permanent collection of The Centre Pompidou Foundation, Paris.

Style and works

Alexander's style is characterised by meticulous labour-intensive brushwork. His art often reinvents the icons of the past, recasting such well-known cultural objects as the Shield of Achilles, Van Gogh's famous portrait of the French physician Paul Gachet, and ruined statues of saints in New College, Oxford. Alexander's painstaking technique, requiring many months to complete a single work, has attracted both praise and befuddlement from critics.[2] ‘Mark Alexander’, according to the Daily Telegraph newspaper, ‘cuts an enigmatic figure in the art world, attracting the interest of some of its most influential collectors. He has produced only twenty-two paintings since his career began in 1993. This is due not to idleness but to a sort of manic fastidiousness.’ ‘The works of this self-taught artist combine elements of eighteenth-century classicism, nineteenth-century photography, and modern photo-realism.’[3]

Alexander's portraits include ones of the contemporary British poet Craig Raine (b. 1944) and the celebrated English architect Sir Thomas Graham Jackson. His recent copies of Van Gogh's notorious Portrait of Dr Gachet, in which he has siphoned off all of the colour of the original, replacing it with heavy black pigment, caused considerable controversy when exhibited in London in 2005.

Alexander's Red Mannheim altarpieces have been included in the 2010 St Paul's cathedral art programme along with Anthony Gormley, Damien Hirst, Bill Viola, Yoko Ono and others.

Exhibitions

Selected Solo Exhibitions:

  • 2016 "Wrestling with Angels Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, Germany
  • 2015 "Credo Beethoven-Haus, Bonn, Germany
  • 2014-2015 "Red and White Mannheim" Bode Museum, Berlin, Germany
  • 2014 "Mannheim Paintings" Galerie Bastian, Berlin, Germany
  • 2013 "American Bog" Broadway 1602 Gallery, New York, USA
  • 2012 "Ground and Unground" Wilkinson Gallery, London UK
  • 2010 "Red Mannheim" St.Paul's Cathedral, London UK
  • 2009 The Blacker Gold Haunch of Venison Gallery, Berlin Germany
  • 2005 The Bigger Victory: Retrospective (Haunch of Venison Gallery), London
  • 2001 The Abhorrence of Virtue and the Love of Vice (Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London)
  • 1999 Ozymandias (Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London)

Selected Group Exhibitions:

  • 2019-2020 "In bester Gesellschaft:Joseph Stielers Beethoven-Portrat und seine Geschichte" Beethoven Haus, Bonn Germany
  • 2019 "Android.Radical.Dream.Grid.Algorithm.Real.Data.God.AI...." Projektraum-Kinstquartier Bethanien, Berlin Germany
  • 2019 "Contemplating the Spiritual in Contemporary Art" Rosenfeld Porcini, London UK
  • 2019 "Portraits Beyond a Likeness" Agnew's Gallery, London UK
  • 2018 "THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGIN'" Galerie Bastian, Berlin Germany
  • 2018 "Summer Exhibition" Royal Academy, London UK
  • 2016 " LUDWIG VAN: Le Mythe Beethoven" Philharmonie de Paris, Paris France
  • 2016 " Collection of Thea Westreich Wagner and Ethan Wagner" The Centre Pompidou, Paris France
  • 2016 "At The Still Point" Galerie Bastian, Berlin, Germany
  • 2016 "Herd of Sheffield" The Children's Hospital Charity, Sheffield, UK
  • 2016 "One Egg a Day" PantaleonsMuehlengasse, Köln, Germany
  • 2015 "Beethoven im Blick moderner und historischer Kunst" Kulturhaus Zanders Bergisch Gladbach, Germany
  • 2015 "Das Verschwundene Museum" Bode Museum, Berlin, Germany
  • 2013 "Green Flower Street" Tatiana Kourochkina Galleria D"Art, Istanbul, Turkey
  • 2012 "power FLOWER:Blüten Zauber in der Zeitgenössischen Kunst", Galerie ABTART, Stuttgart, Germany
  • 2011 "Ars Apocalipsis, Kunst und Kollaps" Kunstverein Kreis, Veerhoffhaus, Gütersloh, Germany
  • 2011 "Play-The Frivolous and the Serious" ME Collectors Room, Berlin Germany
  • 2010 "The Library of Babel - In and Out of Place" 176 Zabludowicz Collection, London, UK
  • 2010 "Summer Exhibition" Royal Academy of Art, London, UK
  • 2010 "Flowers, Death And Butterflies" Ausstellungsraum Céline und Heiner Bastian, Berlin, Germany
  • 2010 "Poetic Justice" Moss Gallery, New York, USA
  • 2008 "Summer Exhibition" Royal Academy of Art, London, UK
  • 2002 The Galleries Show (The Royal Academy of Art, London)
  • 2002 On the Move (Kunsthalle, Basel)
  • 2001 I am a Camera (Saatchi Gallery, London)
  • 1998 Black (withLucia Nogueira) (Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London)

References
  1. The Lives of Mark Alexander, Areté magazine, Volume 17, Spring-Summer 2005, pp. 73-104
  2. Haunch of Venison
  3. Colin Gleadell, Market News, The Daily Telegraph, 28 March 2005
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