Mark Crowley

Teal Tray on Orange, 2015

Digital video, 6:03

I create work in an attempt to decode my preferences built by my inherited tastes and cultural upbringing. I build these pieces image up, and revisit them later with a learned self reflection in order to understand the relationships  between the visual and the conceptual. I never want to compromise an aesthetic to force a concept, but I also don’t want to create a vapid image. I’m searching for balance, an image that I have a strong visceral reaction to, positive or negative, that hints at some preconception or disposition that I have internalized over years of being a modern American, raised on healthy diet of TV and advertisements.

I want to make art about impulses, predispositions, and visceral tastes, not intentional opinions. I want to make an image that makes me un/comfortable and start to explore why I have such strong emotional responses to certain aesthetics and images. I’m trying to understand our culture through understanding myself, but maybe I’m kidding myself.