by
Mark Barrow
by Mark Barrow
2013
The first monographic publication on American artist Mark Barrow is split into two small volumes, counterparts that complement each other to provide new insights into Barrow's unique practice. A Catalogue of paintings and drawings, featuring a conversation between the artist and Matthew Higgs, accompanies Redaction, Barrow's first artist’s book. Matthew Higgs: Can you say more about the book project you have been working on recently, and how you plan to present it—i.e. within a functional, furniture-like structure of your own design? Mark Barrow: The project is a conceptual piece that takes the form of book. It is called Redaction because it is a collection of texts and images I appropriated, and also because I alter the texts by removing words. The basic conceit of the book comes from the linguists Lakoff and Johnson: we can only understand concepts in terms of other concepts. To facilitate movement between concepts I try to pare the texts and images down to their basic elements—pixels and words. (…) The book represents similar ideas to those behind the paintings, but in a different form. I didn’t have to do much research for the book because I was already thinking about most of the texts and images vis-à-vis my paintings. The book seemed like a more direct or transparent medium for delivering the ideas because it did not carry the baggage of being a “painting.”ß It's just thoughts bound together. In this sense, making the book has given me clarity in my own thoughts, and in how I approach my paintings.