All Rights Reserved by Golden Rabbit Films, LLC & Mark Wiener 2010
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Diary Excerpt's
Diary Excerpt:
Place: corner 5th Avenue,
Date: 02.06.12 - Time: 10:15:00 am,
Event: Crossing 5th Avenue, near St. Patrick's Cathedral
This area has always been a great source of inspiration. Street repairs of one kind or the other are always being started and partially completed. Due to 5th Avenue being one of the most trafficked corridors in New York City, workmen do their work quickly, rarely leaving a perfectly manicured surface behind. Their patchwork, one partially repaired area layered over the other, is truly inspirational when studying urban terrain and its street markings . ... diary
Place: Studio
Date: 06.11. 11 - Time: 04:20 am
Event: Gathering, my thoughts ... Black and White
I started my visual career as a photographer with a great love of black and white. The darkroom is my favorite
part of the process, recalled by what I experience now watching my paintings “develop.” It's about chemistry.
How the materials and surfaces react: photographic paper and chemicals, substrates to pigments and media.
It’s all about observation…when lecturing, I liken it to what it’s like to watch raindrops hitting a surface. In both
cases, I’m watching what occurs from the start and responding to the moments in between. I believe color is a
distraction, the distillation of an idea is much clearer for me when absorbing black & white.
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Untitled - Saturday, August 20, 4:21:31 pm - 40" x 30" - 2011 - mixed media on paper
The objects I place on the surface structure each work, in the traditional sense of a still life. These are real
items I collect, placed and traced in a random but controlled manner, the composition that results is much the
same as it would be if I had taken a “still life” photo. (excerpt for catalog "Collections")
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(Diary Excerpt)
Place: MoMA
Date: 06.21. 11 - Time: 04:02 pm
Event: Thinking about the most important influences.
Three creative figures have strongly influenced my work:
Louis Kahn the architech, Irving Penn the photographer and Nicholas Negroponte the founder of the Media Lab at M.I.T.
In college I had the good fortune to experience an impromptu lecture. Luis Kahn sat in the center of a courtyard at Philadelphia College of Art, discussing the idea of the boulder he was sitting on towering over us and the effect of the elements on the bolder in relationship to architect. Many of my works recapitulate this dynamic tension that is a fact of life, the boldness of structure always fighting erosion.
Untitled, Wed, July 13, 3:22:51 pm, 40" x 30", 2011, mixed media on paper
Early in my career I observed photographer Irving Penn orchestrating his wide array of visuals. Watching how he approached an empty surface - fearlessly executing stories – had a profound impact.
unttled, July, 29th, 4:30pm, 17" x 21", mixed media on paper
Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the Media Lab at MIT, wrote a book, “Being Digital.” In one of the opening chapters he described how he and his team first abstracted the idea of graphic representation digitally - how the relationship of bits and atoms gave birth to the computer graphic. From this example I have been inspired to create with the same logic in the layering of my ideas.
cross narrative "59", 63" x 44", 2010, graphite, acrylic and sumi ink on canvas
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... a very long story, one painting to the next... a thread, one dialog to the next...
one work rarely stands alone for a singular idea, when it does is was meant to be from the start.
We use the term series to express the idea of one work relating to the next. My next work is an
amplification of the last.
Something new has happened in a finished painting. It wants to be defined, hence, the next work
follows that path.
portrait of Mark Wiener by Giandomenica Becchio, July 2012
