SaraNoa Mark

CAC partners with EXPO CHICAGO and Newcity for a centerpiece exhibition of this year's Newcity's Breakout Artists. Coinciding with EXPO CHGO ONLINE

CAC is hosting opening day gallery hours on Friday, April 9, 2021. Exhibition is on view until April 29.

Exhibiting artists include: Alejandro Jiménez-Flores, Andrea Coleman, Hyun Jung Jun, Li-Ming Hu, Max Guy, Nat Pyper, Nereida Patricia, SaraNoa Mark, and Unyimeabasi Udoh.

Opening day: Friday, April 9, 3-8pm
On view: April 9 - April 29, 2021

Please reserve your time here.

Breakout Artists 2021: Chicago’s Next Generation of Image Makers

MARCH 24, 2021 AT 7:00 AM BY KERRY CARDOZA

SaraNoa Mark

In “The Sea Around Us,” marine biologist Rachel Carson describes the formation of the earth’s landscape. Once the crust cooled, rain fell for centuries, breaking down mountains, bringing minerals into the sea. “It is an endless, inexorable process that has never stopped,” she writes. Like Carson, artist SaraNoa Mark thinks of the earth as a drawing made by time. That idea informs the way Mark makes work: by slowing down and being present, by making small gestures that build over time, by situating oneself in time and place.

Mark works across mediums—drawing, sculpture, installation—all rooted in a deep research practice. As an undergraduate at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, they studied painting, wanting a firm grasp on observational drawing. Although their work now takes other forms—clay tablets, repurposed chunks of asphalt, samples of sand—it is still rooted in observation, often in the form of field work.

Mark (who uses both they/them and she/her pronouns) has a profound connection to the past, which may stem from their Orthodox Jewish upbringing. Many of her pieces could be mistaken for ancient objects. In college she became interested in drawing as subtraction. Mark started carving paper, then turned to clay, using hand tools to make tiny, repetitive markings. The resulting works, made in neutral earthy tones, resemble Egyptian hieroglyphics or aerial landscapes.

This interest in historical objects was fostered by a four-year period at the Oriental Institute, where Mark thought about how objects are used to tell stories, and which images are prone to survive. This thinking culminated in 2019’s “Temporarily Removed,” her first solo exhibition, at Chicago Artists Coalition. On view were discarded objects from the Oriental Institute’s remodel, including custom-made wall-mounted object holders, hung in rows, as if spelling out a lost alphabet. Another piece consisted of small containers of sand, some the artist had collected from different locales, some they had purchased on Ebay. Mark was interested in what made so many people want to take something from the environment, a stone, a handful of sand, and how that relates to empire, wanting to own something, to control it. Even something as amorphous as land, with borders that shift, people that move, landscapes that constantly transform.

After spending so much time with objects removed from their origins, last year Mark embarked on a Fulbright-sponsored research trip to Turkey to study living rock monuments, “a term for things that have never been removed from place.”

“I make art as a way to exist in the world, but also as an excuse to place myself within situations I want to be spending time in,” she says. In Turkey, they had the chance to visit Hittite monuments and other sites dating back thousands of years. Carved into the sides of mountains, the works have been shaped by the elements over time. When we preserve art, or place it in museums, Mark says, we’re making decisions about what the work actually is. But seeing monuments in their original locations, where you could touch them, or visit them day or night, was a completely different experience. “The artwork is how the body moves through space. It’s how the sun hits it and it’s the sound of birds or the sound of plowing.”

Mark hopes to use this research to make their own public, outdoor artwork. This has manifested in recent work shown at Heaven Gallery. Mark took asphalt stones that washed up on the shores of a South Side beach, and carved into them snippets of conversations collected at the beach over the summer. The stones are part community project, part historical document of a particular time and place in Chicago. New stone works were also included in a solo exhibition this winter at Goldfinch Gallery.

Mark moved to Chicago after college, thinking it would afford the time and space to be inside their own thoughts. Slowly it’s become a real home. Mark is now a co-director at 4th Ward Project Space, and credits a BOLT residency and a studio at the Hyde Park Art Center as formative opportunities. She values every invitation to show, including an upcoming group exhibition at the Chicago Cultural Center. “I just feel so rooted here to the people and everybody making work,” they say. “It feels like such a genuine community. We all keep each other energized.” (Kerry Cardoza)

Newcity April magazine cover image by: Caroline Kent

SIXTY INCHES FROM CENTER

Review: 36° 15’ 43” N 29° 59’ 14” E at Goldfinch Gallery

Published on April 9, 2021
written by Christina Nafziger

Texture as memory, as language, as impression of thought and purpose; this is what is brought forth onto and within the imprints on the surface of objects made by SaraNoa Mark. Tactile and intricate, the artist’s mark making oftentimes reads like indecipherable words, while other times appears as imagery unfolding within the cracks of the surface, much like a relief. These carved and etched lines are akin to the marks made in drawing, which is at the heart of the artist’s practice. “Drawing is the lens through which I experience the world,” says Mark. “I view the earth, itself, as a drawing — continuously drafted by environmental and human gestures.” 

Earthy and mineral-esque, Mark’s objects appear as solid as a rock and as precious as a relic. Manifesting their pieces from carved ceramic, clay, and stone, the artist has chosen a monochromatic palette that accentuates their mark making. With difference in color out of the way, the rich, lush texture is left bare for us to examine and search, so dense and palpable that I can almost physically (or metaphysically?) feel the roughness, the smoothness, the patterned impressions on my skin. For Mark’s work, an intentional change in hue is not needed, as their carving and cutting into the surface of the works create its own slight change in tone, a subtle gradient only gifted to those that take the time to be still and look.

Regarding texture, the artist describes this element of their work as a, “primary medium of artistic communication. I seek to rework that which exists, whether in clay, stone, or fiber. I aim to enter into conversation with carved languages, ranging from sidewalk graffiti to Assyrian reliefs, with the impulse to score picture into place. I am trying to create a visual language that is as much about touch as it is about sight.”

Image: Remnants of a Sandy Substance by SaraNoa Mark, 2021, carved clay. Photo by Ryan Edmund Thiel. Courtesy of Goldfinch Gallery and the artist.

Mark’s newest body of work is on view in their solo exhibition titled 36° 15’ 43” N 29° 59’ 14” E at Goldfinch Gallery. A result of Mark’s recent Fulbright research fellowship in Turkey, the works in the show draw from the artist’s experience among the country’s rock monuments and ancient city sites, such as the Lycian metropolis. The title of the show, 36° 15’ 43” N 29° 59’ 14” E, refers to the coordinates of this location, or more specifically, the “backside” of the mountain at this site. “For Mark, this ‘secret’ or neglected part of an ancient site threw into very literal relief questions about pilgrimage and abandonment, value and neglect,” explains Goldfinch Gallery. What is value and neglect tied to and what is it contingent on? What compels us to preserve and memorialize some objects and sites over others? Is value inherent, or is it thrusted upon an object based on our own judgements and hierarchies of cultures, aesthetics, and measured ‘usefulness’ or function?

As I mentioned here before, texture is memory. As the artist is fascinated by our compulsion to document experience, these objects in and of themselves are a kind of recording. The faint patterns and impressions in Mark’s work hold a kind of passing of time, or perhaps a specific moment in it. It may be true that the nature of the work does bring to mind ancient scrolls and relics. However, Mark’s pieces do not replicate or embody ancient artefacts, but instead usurps their function. Instead of referencing our own history—time that already exists—each object holds, manifests, and pushes forth its own past, present, and future.

With some pieces hanging on the white gallery walls and others sitting on a table of sand, the works differ greatly depending on location. Contingent on what they sit against and depending on their own immediate environment, the textures vibrate and slowly change. For A City Unaware of its Own Existence, the texture exists in striking contrast to the smooth wall it hangs upon. Yet against beige sand, more time is demanded in the viewing, as the clashing of textures forms a tension that tricks the eye—at least, my own eyes—into seeing movement. An energy is sought and drawn out in a way that implies a spirit, a memory, a history.

I would be remiss if I did not mention specifically what were, for me, the stand out pieces of the show: Shaping Sand, 2021, made out of carved clay and hung on a wall, and its four counterparts, which are displayed lying down flat. The deep grey-black tone of the clay caused me to immediately notice them, as the rest of the show is largely hues of cream and beige—but it was the tight sophistication of the tiny, intricate cuts into the surface that left me struck. Like all of Mark’s pieces included in 36° 15’ 43” N 29° 59’ 14” E, these pieces left a satisfying taste in my mouth, one that is created only when one experiences artwork that has formed its own distinct language—a “non-verbal alphabet”–one that lingers on the tongue.

36° 15’ 43” N 29° 59’ 14” E is on view at Goldfinch Gallery from February 27 through April 10, 2021.

Art Top 5: April 2021

MARCH 29, 2021 AT 7:00 AM BY KERRY CARDOZA

SaraNoa Mark: 36° 15’ 43” N 29° 59’ 14” E
(Goldfinch Gallery)
The 2021 Breakout Artist shows new sculptural work that asks questions about how cultural objects are tasked with recording time and history.
Through April 10

TOP V. WEEKEND PICKS (2/25-3/3)

by Visualist Chicago | Feb 25, 2021 

1. SaraNoa Mark: 36° 15’ 43” N 29° 59’ 14” E

February 27-28, 12-4PM (by appointment)
Goldfinch: 319 N Albany Ave

My Solo show 36° 15’ 43” N 29° 59’ 14” E will run at Goldfinch Gallery February 27 - April 10

Regular gallery hours are Fridays and Saturdays, 12-4pm, by appointment

Visit the link to make your appointment:

https://goldfinch-gallery.com/gallery-visit-appointments/

Due to continued health concerns related to Covid-19, we will not have an opening reception for this exhiibition. Goldfinch remains open by individual, 30 minute appointments; visitors are required to wear a mask throughout their visit (provided as needed). 

Goldfinch is proud to present “36° 15’ 43” N 29° 59’ 14” E,” a solo exhibition of new sculptures by SaraNoa Mark.
 
SaraNoa Mark’s practice investigates traces left by time, as they exist in landscapes and in collective memory. Using lasting materials like carved clay and discarded stones, the artist explores notions of permanence and erasure, questioning why certain pieces of history remain visible, while others fall away and are lost. Through intricate sculptural work that “rhymes” with, rather than replicates, ancient artifacts and sites of antiquity, Mark considers how we task certain objects with surviving time and how, in turn, these objects shape our perceptions of history. In other words, when we only see what we’re reminded of, what do we neglect in the process? What remains hidden, but still present?
 
Mark’s new body of work stems from a recent Fulbright research fellowship in Turkey, during which the artist visited living rock monuments throughout the country. Among these sites was Myra, an ancient Lycian metropolis, in the present-day Antalya Province. Now a Turkish national park and international tourist destination, the site is known for its rock-cut tombs, carved into the vertical cliff faces of a mountain. With further exploration of the area, Mark visited the mountain’s other side, quietly tucked behind orange groves, away from the crowds. The mountain’s “backside” revealed rock cut staircases and tombs, equally as complex and mysterious as the carved ruins of the front. For Mark, this “secret” or neglected part of an ancient site threw into very literal relief questions about pilgrimage and abandonment, value and neglect. “36° 15’ 43” N 29° 59’ 14” E,” the coordinates of Myra’s reverse mountainside, invites us into a new landscape, where what is discarded, buried, and remembered is exposed all at once—a historical record remade, and then remade again.

Surface Tension at Heaven Gallery

December 11th - January 24th 

Curated by Pia Singh 

Artists: Yani Aviles, Ashley Gillanders, Rosemary Holliday Hall, SaraNoa Mark, Galen-Odell Smedley

Open to the public (mask required) 
On view during gallery hours:
Friday and Saturday 1-6 PM, Sunday 1-5 PM

Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art 
Chicago Sculpture International Biennial

The exhibition will run October 30, 2020-December 13,
2020

Moving Forward in a time of Change: Our New Relationship to the World We Live In is an exhibition addressing newfound issues generated by the pandemic. The absence of human activity has created noticeable improvements from clearer skies, breathable air quality and less noise to increased movement of wildlife into human frequented areas. Works are sought relating to how these shifts have changed our relationship to the world we live in, such as our sense of space – open and contained, the passing of time, and the un- or over-availability of some materials.

Work was selected by Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art Curator, Adrienne Kochman. A catalogue will be published.  

Fulbright Project Spotlight:

What can artwork from three millennia ago tell us about public art today? PAFA The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts graduate and visual artist SaraNoa Mark proposes to investigate ancient Anatolian art during her upcoming #Fulbright to Turkey.

“At the core of my project is a concern with how humans transform our physical environments. My aim is to first study several Anatolian monuments carved into living rock during three millennia starting from 1400 BCE to consider the role of public monuments in our collective cultural imagination, as well as ways that public art can become more sensitive to local communities and ecologies.”

@FulbrightTurkey https://bit.ly/2xgGJl8

Community lunch is an ongoing tradition at Mana Contemporary Chicago, where artists convene weekly to catch up, meet new people, and exchange ideas over lunch. Join us in this virtual lunch series where Chicago community director, Sarah Khalid Dhobhany, introduces two members from the Mana Contemporary community in conversation about what they’re doing and creating during this time.

This week, artists Jacquelyn Carmen Guerrero and SaraNoa Mark join us for lunch.

We are pleased to present by & for | BLM, an Instagram-mediated relief auction for local and national level not for profit organizations working to ensure the safety of Black Trans Lives and Black community organizers currently working at the forefront of the Black Lives Matter movement. This edition has been collectively.

Collectively curated by Jameson Paige, Fabiola Tosi, Alex-Peyton Levine and Pia Singh, this edition features thirty three original artworks on view on the by & for Instagram page. Bids will open via the comments section of each artwork, or via direct messages, from 10:00 a.m. CDT on the 20th of June through 10:00 a.m. CDT on the 23rd of June, 2020.

Founded by Pia Singh at the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis in March 2020, by & for was conceived as a platform for artists to directly support one another through the sale of individual artworks. Artists are invited to donate one work for auction, presented to a viewing public in a live-bidding experience, for incremental bids of $50 over a 72 hour period. Usually, all funds raised in the auction are divided equally amongst participating artists at the closing of auction. For this edition, we will be splitting the funds raised between Brave Space Alliance, BlackTransFutures. and the Trans Justice Funding Project and 2 community organizers based in Chicago.

by & for | BLM brings together artists of all ages and of varying degrees of experience, in order to build a collective sense of shared well-being. This edition features work by: Elena Ailes, Claire Ashley, Angela Azmitia, Lucy Baird, Margaret Crowley, Cass Davis, Madeleine Finley, Rami George, Griffin Goodman, Rosemary Hall, Erin Hayden , Ellen Holtzblatt, Jennifer Huang , Michiko Itatani, Jin Lee, Alex-Peyton Levine, Mev Luna, SaraNoa Mark, Jesse Meredith, Matt Morris, Emily Mulder, Kelly Neibert, Shonna Pryor, Jeff Robinson, Gonzalo Reyes Rodriguez , Elaine Rubenoff , Ruby T, Elaine Tanski, Unyimaebasi Udoh, Laura Wetter , William Wiebe , Guanyu Xu and Shanna Zentner

Review of Preserving a Find by Edith Newhall for the Philadelphia Inquirer

Here are the shows you should see in Philly art galleries now

Ancient finds, in Kensington
Tiger Strikes Asteroid’s group show, “Preserving a Find,” curated by TSA members Megan Biddle and Adam Lovitz, gathers works that suggest relics in one way or another. The impressive lineup of artists here includes Patrick Maguire, SaraNoa Mark, Monica Palma, Liza Samuel, Dominic Terlizzi, and Thaddeus Wolfe.

To me, Samuel’s four paintings are the most ancient-seeming works, with materials like clays, foraged animal bones, chlorophyll, and various minerals. Mark’s carved ceramic sculptures also speak to a distant past. They could pass for fragments of architecture.

Through March 28 at Tiger Strikes Asteroid, 1400 N. American St., noon-6 p.m. Sat. 484-469-0319 or tigerstrikesasteroid.com.

Preserving a Find at Tiger Strikes Astroid Philadelphia

Patrick Maguire, SaraNoa Mark, Mónica Palma, Liza Samuel, Dominic Terlizzi and Thaddeus Wolf
Co-curated by Megan Biddle and Adam Lovitz
February 22 - March 28
Opening Reception: Thursday, March 12, 6-9PM

My work Guarding Invisibility has been aquired by the West Collection through the Lifts grant.

The ten artists who are chosen for this initiative will later be part of an exhibition, once the West Collection space in Philadelphia is complete.

SaraNoa Mark is the sixth recipient in the LIFTS initiative. We asked her a few questions.

1. Tell us about this work specifically?

My work is deeply impacted by the ancient artifacts at the Oriental Institute, where I worked as a museum guard to support my studio practice. As the museum re-presented the artifacts in preparation for its centennial, I found myself guarding a collection of empty cases. The experience of guarding absence evoked an acute awareness of the artifacts’ presence far from their points of extraction. The armatures are painted the color of the object they were designed to hold -- that of the earth from which the objects were made. Devoid of the physical objects the armatures were designed to support, the installation employs an institutional alphabet to contemplate the absence of objects displaced from their places of origin. The collected armatures were made by the museum preparators at the Oriental Institute to display artifacts.

Review of Art at Kings Oaks in Bucks Local News 

COUPLE CURATES ART EXHIBITION AT BUCKS COUNTY FARMART AT KING OAKS: Bucks County couple curates art exhibition at Wrightstown Township farm

Presenting an intergenerational group of artists is a core element of Art at Kings Oaks, with work from advanced-career artists like Lois Dodd (b. 1927) whose observational landscapes bring a clarity of expression honed throughout her celebrated 70-year career, to rising star SaraNoa Mark (b. 1991) whose carved clay paper sculptures suggest an interpretive engagement with antiquities. Other highlights include the luscious oil paintings of New Yorker Younghee Choi Martin, transporting the viewer into a dream of Aeschylus’s Oresteia, while Leroy Johnson’s mixed-media collages explore the past and present landscape of inner city Philadelphia. Decorative scagliola - imitation marble - friezes and sculptures by Kathleen Vissar, co-founder of Philadelphia’s Wells Vissar, will be installed in the chapel. Work by New York City painter and master frame-maker Robert M. Kulicke (1924-2007) will be displayed alongside work by his widow, painter and master frame-maker Pam Sheehan. International artists include Londoner Naomi Grant and Kouta Sasai from Japan, both sending arresting self-portraits.

ART AT KINGS OAKS

Curated by Alex Cohen and Clara Weishahn

In its seventh year, Art at Kings Oaks will present the work of 28 renowned and emerging artists from across the U.S., the U.K., and Japan this fall.  Paintings, drawings, etchings, collage, sculpture, and ceramic art will be on display in the barn and chapel galleries at Kings Oaks from October 4 – 20, 2019.  

Exhibiting Artists: Younghee Choi Martin, Alex Cohen, Lois Dodd, Mike Dowley, David Fertig, Dorothy Frey, Naomi Grant, Nancy Gruskin, Eric Holzman, Leroy Johnson, Deborah Kahn, James Kao, Benjamin King, Robert M. Kulicke, David MacDonald, Elizabeth MacDonald, SaraNoa Mark, Ruth Miller, Melvin Nesbitt Jr., Sarah Norsworthy, Drew Panckeri, E.M. Saniga, Mayumi Sarai, Kouta Sasai, Pam Sheehan, Laura Vahlberg, Wells Vissar, Scott Wheelock

Art at Kings Oaks
756 Worthington Mill Road
Newtown, PA 18940
kingsoaks@comcast.net
Tel. 215-603-6573

Traces of Absence: A Review of SaraNoa Mark at Chicago Artists Coalition

APRIL 2, 2019 AT 8:30 AM BY PIA SINGH

The exhibition “Temporarily Removed” at Chicago Artists Coalition comprises a body of work by SaraNoa Mark that emerged during her BOLT residency. Mark moves the viewer through an assemblage of sculptures, reliefs and objects, using each axis of a 334-square-foot gallery space as a line of archaeological inquiry. The exhibition guides the viewer to consider how time marks the earth and what becomes of materials once they have been extracted from their places of origin.