Thursday, May 16, 2013

Workplace Gallery at Art Basel Hong Kong






Marcus Coates, Iron Prominent, Notodonta dromedarius (larva) Self Portrait, shaving foam, 2013, Archival Giclée Print mounted on Aluminium, 172.7 x 121.9 cm, 68 x 48 in, edition of 5 plus 1 artists proof (MC0163)

Marcus Coates

Solo presentation



DISCOVERIES Section
Hall 1 BOOTH 35
Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center

23 - 26 May 2013
https://www.artbasel.com/en/Hong-Kong

Workplace Gallery are pleased to present an entirely new body of work by British artist Marcus Coates, exhibited for the first time at Art Basel Hong Kong. Consisting of a series of large scale photographic self-portraits, these works are a continuation of the performative 'becomings' at the centre of Coates' enquiry into the definition and parameters of human-ness. Here the physicality and symbolism of material (shaving foam, sugar, dough, cotton wool) combine with the portrait to create a 'new' subjectivity: a metamorphosis of self which is driven by both the will and belief of the artist, and the physical transformation of appearance through applied substance. Within this new body of works Coates embraces the notion of a common consciousness across species; and in doing so attempts to embody families of species like moths or birds that are seemingly entirely alien and disconnected to us.

Marcus Coates was born in 1968 in London, UK. In 2008 he was the recipient of a Paul Hamyln Award and in 2009 he won the Diawa Art Prize.

Solo exhibitions include: Skills Exchange: Urban Transformation and the Politics of Care, Serpentine Gallery, London; Implicit Sound, Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona; Psychopomp, Milton Keynes Gallery; Marcus Coates, Kunsthalle, Zurich, Switzerland; and Marcus Coates, Museum of Modern Art, New Orleans, USA.

Group exhibitions include: THE BEAUTY OF DISTANCE: Songs of Survival in a Precarious Age, Sydney Biennale, Australia; ALTERMODERN, Tate Triennial, Tate Britain, London; MANIFESTA 7, Trento, Italy; Micro-narratives: tentation des petites réalités, Musée d'Art moderne de Saint-Etienne, France; Laughing in a Foreign Language, Hayward Gallery, London; Hamsterwheel, Malmo Konsthall, Malmo, Sweden and Venice Biennale

For more information on these works please contact: info@workplacegallery.co.uk