HIPPOLYTE STUDIO
Kalevankatu 18 B, 00100 Helsinki
09 612 33 44, www.hippolyte.fi
Open: Tue–Fri 12–17, Sat–Sun 12–16
10.9.-3.10.2010
Mark Maher
TROUBLE
“We are odd, miraculous creatures capable of astounding acts of transformation. It is the essence of what we do… “
In TROUBLE, Mark Maher melts and splices cheap plastic toys into sharply relevant visual commentaries on human nature and our relationship to the natural world. His darkly playful riffs link topics as seemingly diverse as genetic engineering, space-age animism, ecological destruction, and the horrific idiocy of modern warfare.
In combining his peculiar images with actual questions from an early 20th century exam for schizophrenia, Maher’s at his quirky best – betting everything on a stylish long shot aimed squarely at the whole shebang. The text is a genuine, verbatim test for insanity developed by an obscure American psychiatrist around 1905. It inspired this series of photographs that, together with the text, is offered as another sort of test – hopefully not a proof – of our collective madness.
In the introduction to the book version of TROUBLE, Maher writes: “We’re trashing our environment and erasing many of the species we share our planet with, while plotting to kill each other as efficiently as the latest technology will allow. Almost inexplicably, there remains for many of us a powerful sense of hope and wonder – an awesome magic – in being alive.”
“Who decides the shape of things? Maybe it’s you and me.”
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The book TROUBLE is also available at Hippolyte Studio during the exhibition:Mark Maher
TROUBLE
Published by Into Kustannus Oy, 2009
www.intokustannus.fi
ISBN 978-952-5675-39-9
exhibition price 15 €With TROUBLE, Helsinki-based artist and curator Mark Maher takes a decidedly different approach than was seen in his 2008 book and Amos Anderson Museum exhibit, Meltpoint (Like Kustannus).
This time, Maher steps away from explorations of classicism and material process to investigate issues of severe social and psychological distortion. In this respect at least, TROUBLE is closer to his earlier series of Polaroid landscape photographs and absurdist social commentary, American Polaroids (Like Kustannus, 2003).
Critical acclaim for TROUBLE:
“More and more we live in a world of disjunctive experiences and surprising juxtapositions and yet, as Maher remarks, evolutionary transformation itself has always been full of such surprises and disjunctions. Nobody is more alert than Maher to capturing the transformative ironies of post-modern life.”
– James Fernandez,
Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, University of Chicago
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Born in 1960 in the USA, Mark Maher exhibits his art in Europe, North America and, most recently, Kuwait and China. He lives in Helsinki, Finland, where conditions encourage thoughts and ideas unlikely to thrive in less silent places. His roots are in anthropology, social landscape photography, and long-distance hitchhiking.
For the past three decades Maher has asked interrelated questions about the power of fictional artifacts, the relationship of words and objects to images, and the role of the independent artist as an agent of social criticism.
In addition to his own art projects Maher is an independent curator whose continuing exhibition series – Love&Money – has formally presented over 40 leading and emerging artists to Finnish business professionals within the corporate workspace. TROUBLE is his fifth book.
Information and press images:
Hippolyte Studio, +358 9 612 33 44, info[at]hippolyte.fi
Mark Maher: Untitled - from the series TROUBLE
