" For me, a work of art must first and foremost be a question."
- Mark Jenkins
Four years after his first solo exhibition at the gallery, Mark Jenkins is back with "Outsiders", from December 3, 2022 to January 14, 2023 at Danysz Paris - Marais. The American artist invites us into his world populated by characters of a striking realism: works that are captivating, intriguing and always provoke strong reactions. Indeed, Jenkins' hyperrealistic installations have the ability to sow doubt between fiction and reality through the interaction of his art and the public, the essence of the artist's work.
Through the exhibition "Outsiders", Jenkins gives shape to his sculptures whose attitude and movement never cease to amaze by their genuine humanization, thus breaking the monotony of daily life. He presents his unexpected sculptures, which are the source of his international reputation: life-size silhouettes camouflaged under their hoods, which he dresses in ordinary clothes. Sitting, standing, lying down, hanging, these characters are at the center of striking scenes taking place in the Parisian space of the Danysz Gallery.
It was in the early 2000s, that Mark Jenkins has started to create realistic human sculptures that he installs in public spaces. Anonymous figures of men and women, often lonely, put in unusual places or positions that inevitably attract attention. They seem to tell of their difference, the fact they are not being part of a group and their difficulty to find their place in our society.
If these characters fit into our daily environment, it is in fact to better stand out by engaging in activities where the absurd competes with black humor. Offbeat rituals that distort norms and subvert our usual codes in broad daylight and in full view of everyone.
“I create a social experience first. I could be sociologist. I think I am exploring something that is beyond art. It is another experience.”
- Mark Jenkins
Public space plays a major role in Mark Jenkins' work. It is here that his sculptures interact with passers-by, transforming the street into a stage that makes them not only viewers but also actors. In this urban theater, people's reactions become subjects of study and experiments that the artist enjoys conducting. It is all about introducing a foreign body, both literally and figuratively, into the place (whether it is the street, a gallery or a museum) in order to better scrutinize the reaction of the social body to this disturbing element.
One could merely see Mark Jenkins' characters as anti-conformists or misfits, as losers. They should rather be considered as outsiders to be reckoned with because they are capable of causing a surprise. It's all a question of point of view and of the meaning one wants to give to the word success. In the end, and despite appearances, it is perhaps these outsiders who could be the real winners of the so-called the "rat race", a metaphor for the fierce competition in which modern man is engaged.
These outsiders, as strange as they are strangers, are silent witnesses living at our edges and provoking us by bringing out the irrational and another way of being to the world. They invite us to stop, to pause and to question ourselves on the meaning of things. Isn't this frantic race a headlong rush? What is normal? What is a city? What if isolation was a luxury, as the artist suggested in the title of one of his works? What if real life was elsewhere?
Mark Jenkins was born in 1970 in Fairfax, he lives and works in Washington DC. His artworks have been presented all over the world: United States, Brazil, France, Spain, Italy, Ireland, Sweden, Russia, South Korea, Serbia, Japan. His work has been exhibited in museum institutions such as the Kunsthalle Wien (Austria), the Perm Museum of Contemporary Art (Russia), the Centre Pompidou (France), or the Beirut Art Center (Lebanon).
