| Mark Grotjahn | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1968 Pasadena, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | Painter |
Mark Grotjahn (born 1968 in Pasadena, California, U.S.) is an American painter best known for abstract work and bold geometric paintings. Grotjahn lives and works in Los Angeles.
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Grotjahn was born in Pasadena, but grew up in the Bay Area.[1] He received his MFA from the University of California, Berkeley, and his BFA from the University of Colorado at Boulder. When he moved to Los Angeles, he opened a gallery with his friend Brent Peterson and started showing and working with other artists.[2]
In the mid 1990s, Grotjahn began working on a stream of densely worked colored pencil drawings, followed by oil paintings, which focused on perspective investigations such as dual and multiple vanishing points.[3] The way Grotjahn paints grew out of conceptual sign making; he would faithfully reproduce peculiar graphics and phrases from local storefronts in his native Los Angeles. He would then trade these handmade copies to the storeowners in exchange for the original signage.[4]
Later Grotjahn began working with colored pencils to develop "perspective drawings" and then perspectival paintings.[5] In his multi-colored drawings, Grotjahn's working method is systematic and rigorous but also allows for intuition and chance. He first begins by mapping out the triangular radii in black pencil. For each work in this series of drawings, Grotjahn then sets aside the required number of colour pencils, choosing colours that ‘hold together' in value and intensity. Having laid them next to him, he chooses one pencil at random and uses it to colour in a single, pre-segmented wing section.[6]
Since 1997 Grothjahn has been exploring the radiant motif in his paintings and drawings. This sustained investigation is illustrated in his Butterfly series[7] Here, he draws on Renaissance perspectival techniques for the structures and subjects of his multiple-vanishing-point butterfly patterns in order to create the illusion that his geometries stretch, shrink, approach, and recede.[8] The Butterfly Paintings essentially consist of a radiating sequence of parallel lines are executed in thick oil in such a way that an illusion of perspective is generated by the painting's butterfly form.[9] The horizontal and vertical lines are rarely, if ever, horizontal or perpendicular to the edges of the canvas.[10]
A later series of large, vertical Face Paintings is based on the simple geometric structure of eyes, nose, and mouth.[11] Using sheets of cardboard that are primed and mounted on linen as the ground, Grotjahn employs brush and palette knife to extensively build layer upon layer of oil paint to almost sculptural ends.[12]
Grotjahn's solo exhibitions include shows at UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles (2005) and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (2006). His work has been exhibited in group exhibitions at galleries and museums such as the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in New York, Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund, and Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, in Germany, and The Royal Academy in London. His work is featured in several prominent collections including the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Saatchi Gallery in London. He was included in the 54th Carnegie International in 2004 and the Whitney Biennial in 2006.
Mark Grotjahn is often regared as one of many contemporary painter revisiting late Modernism, alongside fellow painters Tomma Abts, Wade Guyton, Eileen Quinlan, Sergei Jensen, and Cheyney Thompson.[13]
In 2010, Grotjahn's oil on linen painting Untitled (Lavender Butterfly Jacaranda over Green) (2004) was sold for $1,5 million against its presale estimate of $500–700,000 at Christie's New York.[14]
Grotjahn is represented by Anton Kern Gallery in New York, Gagosian Gallery in London, Blum and Poe Gallery in Los Angeles, and Shane Campbell Gallery in Chicago