ARTIST SPOTLIGHT :: Mark Garry

MARK GARRY
being here, 2008
thread, pins, beads, carved basswood, pine, componium (2), punched paper



Mark Garry is interested in how humans navigate the world and the subjectivity inherent in these navigations. While Garry employs a number of media and mechanisms in his practice, he mainly focuses on making site-specific gallery based installations. This installation comprises three essential elements, an intervention made from beads, pins and threads, a carved wood sculpture and mechanical musical mechanisms. being here combines physical, visual sensory and empathetic analogies, creating arrangements of elements that relate to the physical space and each other.



Garry designed the room housing this installation. Traversing the space is a large thread intervention that moves through the room. The scale of this intervention has a direct dialogue with the geometry of this room. The piece is formed by hundreds of tiny threads attached to the walls and floor of the gallery with an elaborate miniature pulley system involving pins and beads. This system manifests a spectrum of color that is surprising in that it is at once monumental and barely visible. It transforms in luminescence, tone and color as one moves around it. This work is also affected by the different tones of natural light entering the room, and appears to be in constant flux, changing throughout each day and each season turning from vibrant to invisible.

    

The sonic element of this installation is also informed by what is outside the room. Garry made a musical piece that is an adaptation of a drawing of the landscape that surrounds the Mattress Factory. This drawing was transferred into a range of twenty notes and further adapted on piano by Garry and Anne Angyal. The composition was then punched out of paper and is now played on two componiums (music boxes) by visitors.

    

The third element of this installation mirrors the levels of skill and precision observed in the other two works. Garry has made detailed, basswood carvings of grasses that he found on the road outside the Mattress Factory. This site-specific work is quiet and beautiful, and the space is contemplative yet engaging. When encountered in nature, a rainbow is a physical and optical miracle, a rare occurrence that inspires the experience of the sublime. This work attempts to bring a similar sensation of wonder to the viewer.