A RETURN TO OLD CERTAINTIES

Mark Woods produces highly elaborated artefacts that blur the boundaries between high-end jewellery and fine art, between items from a cabinet of curiosities and luxurious objects of desire. As unnerving as evocative, the viewer is confronted with exquisite beauty, sophisticated craftsmanship and the awakening of unexpected emotions. That is the power of Woods' works: an invitation to step out from our comfort zone and confront human desires.
Lorenzo Belenguer (artist and art critic)

Woods' sculptures seem to echo to perfection the fraudulent simulation phenomena of a society increasingly obsessed with glamour and pornography.
Mónica Sánchez-Argilé (critic)

A Return To The Old Certainties is that rare thing: an exhibition that brings us a renewed encounter between psychoanalysis and fine art. At once disciplined and productively wayward, Mark Woods’ work dialectic directs us towards a compelling voyeuristic world that awakens and invites us intimately to his fine making skills, love, curiosity, perversion, aggression, impurity and much more, ultimately all devised and compellingly so for an artist himself to unbecome accomplice in that ritual of repetitive abandonment.
Vanya Balogh (curator and artist)

Woods has kindly agreed to respond to the following questions:

What is the reaction you expect to awake from the viewer with your creations?

Curiosity, perhaps surprise, certainly to question….I can never predict what reactions people have to these works, however, it does make me happy that people want to come & see it though...people often surprise, showing a glimpse of the darker corners of psyche…

Do you see your works blurring the boundaries between a highly sophisticated Craftmanship and Fine Arts? How?

Product produced by crafting, made to look synthetic, manufactured, seduction & desire, provocation of seduction & desire, harnessed to the cause of the market, consumption, commodity fetishism... commerce... selling us something...

About the artist

Mark Woods was born in Surrey in 1961. He attended art college for two terms but didn’t feel comfortable in this formalised environment, opting to self train. From an early age Mark had a fascination with nature especially insects and was drawn to the jewellery work of Rene Lalique and Faberge and the paintings of Bosche especially his heretical subversion with Catholic imagery.

About the curator

Vanya Balogh is a photographer, artist and independent curator born in Zagreb, Croatia. He currently lives and works between cities of London, Berlin and Venice. He has studied at Central St Martins and Regents College Of Psychotherapy and Counselling. His curation, which is an integral part of his creative output is defined by high intensity, large scale events which are designed for alternative spaces, instigating autonomous temporal zones for emerging and established artists to experiment and observe the disputed realm between business, commerce and art. Most notable are his recent series of group exhibitions in West End car parks. On a smaller scale, a collateral exhibition for the 56th Venice Biennale and an apartment project called VROOM, which inhabits artists living rooms, have both garnered much attention.

For further press information, please contact:

Belenguer PR on Lorenzo.Belenguer@gmail.com
Or the artist, Mark Woods on info@markwoods-studio.com