Mark Pease

Region: Midwest

City / State: Carbondale, IL

My work arises from my fascination with the architecture of shopping malls, commercial offices, modernist buildings, and public transportation. I’m interested in these places and nonplaces as they relate to human daydreaming, artificiality, and the recognition of our visual sensitivities. I also draw from op art, children’s toys, and 3D animation. Through the integration of digital imaging, vector graphics, modeling, and animation I construct scenarios about these spaces in works that are both abstract and representational. I explore the line between the dazzling and lackluster, flat and dimensional, object and image, and print and painting. I create physical experiences in much of what I do, either through optical energies that force the eye to manage contradictory illusions, or through the refocusing of light, shadow, and space in a way so that viewers are able to empathize with and attach themselves to inanimate objects like buildings and man-made surfaces.