MARK DEPMAN December 13 - January 24, 2004
Mark Depman continues his still life series, eschewing the full tabletop and mantelpiece images from home in favor of more distilled, pure images composed in his studio, utilizing tools of his dual professions, art and medicine. Photographing bowls he has made in front of panoramic landscapes, photos he has taken, he sets up charged, tension-filled images. While conceived like a stage set, the photos are fresh and believable, and pose questions about what is real and what is imagined, what lies beneath the surface physically, psychologically and emotionally.
	Of his new still lifes, Depman writes: " Four new photographs take the viewer into two simultaneous worlds: a wintry, snow-filled place that floats in the background; and the more familiar still life foreground, rooting me 'back home' or 'in the studio.' An active journey or narrative now takes place, while the stop-time in the foreground now resists the forward motion of the background narrative. The four images progress from The Incident at Mill Pond with its skaters and lush foreground details, and Thicket, with its inscrutable electro-luminescent panels, to the stark Kiss, and the last image, McKain Hill, with its pallid and stripped planes of color."
New for Depman are two series, the first of which is entitled "Absorption." At first glance these images appear to be abstractions, but reveal themselves as real physical entities: what the artist refers to as the "remains of the day," what is left at the end of a day at home, in the studio or in the hospital where he works a few days a week. Of this body of work, he writes: "These works focus on a familiar motif: a piece of paper towel or tissue. This ubiquitous absorptive medium is seen as if it had just mopped up the surface around it, or as if it had been part of an analytic test. And what does it suggest? In ordinary life, in the laboratory or the clinic, it suggests the measure of bodily func-tions and fluids. At the same time, however, the colors and clotted tissues suggest the artist¹s presence in his studio: what's left after the day's work, the stains of paint and brushes and cleaning up: Burnt Sienna, Yellow Ochre, Chinese Orange, Olive Green, Indigo. What's left of the day: the remnants, the scattered foci of inquiry, love, emotion, work, and routine duties, all absorbed in one painterly object and gesture."
	The second new series in the show is less formal, smaller in scale, focused on images associated with traditional Christmas cards. While these images resonate a holiday spirit and color, they reflect Depman's religious upbringing juxtaposed with his current philosophical belief in art, his own sanctuary, his daily practice. Of these images the artist says: "These are still life studies, looking at ideas of painterliness (in gouache and coffee stain circles), spatial deformity (in head-on tubes, bottles and planetary forms), and composition. And there is meaning: the old religious icons and images simultane-ously appear cast off and magical."
Mark Depman takes a leap into uncharted waters and offers the viewer a rich play in three acts, each more personal and yet more universal than his earlier work.
Mark Depman's work has been shown at Bronx River Art Center, Bronx, New York; Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, New York; John Slade Ely House, New Haven; The New Haven Colony Historical Society, Connecticut; Selby Gallery, John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida; Connecticut; Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina; Wethersfield Historical Society, Connecticut and Museo de Artes Visuales, Caracas. His videography, "Three Music Videos, 13'15"," was shown at numerous film festivals in this country and throughout Europe.
Mark Depman was born in Camden, New Jersey in 1954. He was educated at Harvard College and Cornell University Medical College and was a Knox Fellow at Balliol College and John Ruskin School of Drawing and Painting, Oxford, England. He resides in Guilford, Connecticut.