Lyndsey Marko: A Short Vision
@ Andrew Rafacz
1749 W Chicago Ave, Chicago, IL 60622
On view through Saturday, October 29th
ANDREW RAFACZ is pleased to announce A Short Vision, a solo exhibition of new paintings from Lyndsey Marko in Gallery Two. The exhibition opens Friday, September 16th and continues through Saturday, October 29th, 2022. This is the artist’s first exhibition with the gallery.
The afterimage of personal experience haunts the paintings in Lyndsey Marko’s A Short Vision, where a memory is called upon so frequently, it appears swallowed by abysmal nothingness. Marko has created a series of boats on fire, set against the backdrop of the dark of night. These enflamed forms of light and reflection are starkly contrasted with the stillness of their surrounding negative space. They mimic the destabilizing sensation of encountering a Fata Morgana, a sea mirage, caused by atmospheric refraction by way of thermal inversion.
Through fabrication and stylization, Marko fashions her own iterated narrative, opening a portal to a premonition of something horrible, reflecting on what it feels like to bear witness. These spectral images, heavily anchored in light, dwell on the believability of memory and imagination through the optics of spectacle and tragedy. They reference our own metaphysical connection to our transient environment, calling into question notions of safety and fragility, and our willingness to accept artifice as fact.
Marko’s paintings play with a kind of voyeuristic distance. The viewer is removed from the tragedy that is unfolding, ultimately unable to get to it. The scale of her smallest works alludes to other devices of watching too— screens, cameras, looking glasses— which manifest in a similar way to a recurring film loop or an ill-fated snow globe. There’s no beginning or end, only the chaotic in media res. There are gaping holes in the story, and the darkness stands in for it.
LYNDSEY MARKO (American, b. 1990) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. She received her MFA from Yale University in 2019 and her BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2013. Recent exhibitions include New Release, The Hole and Geary Contemporary (all New York, NY), Outhouse and Alcatraz Gallery (Chicago, IL), and Foyer L.A. (Los Angeles, CA). Marko’s work and accompanying interviews have been published in the Nashville Review and INSIDE \ WITHIN. This is her first solo exhibition with the gallery.
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Tags: A Short Vision, andrew rafacz, Chicago, Lyndsey Marko, West Town
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