G126 presents Mark Cullen
Blackflash:
A disorientating condition when an occurrence from a fictional past intercedes in the mind of the present, perceived as a real event, or as a continuum of happening.
An instance of remembering an experience that may or may not have happened when one has ‘blacked out’, lost consciousness, or when one has disconnected from ones own subjectivity, through the result of an immersive experience in an alternate reality, an hallucination, or such as a through a ‘letting go’ engagement with fiction, with music or with ones daydreams.
An uncomfortable ‘snap back’ effect may be experienced as one returns to a pre-blackflash state.
Mark Cullen explores cosmologies, playfully engaging our senses, he jolts our position in relation to our surroundings and our imagination. Making use of cinematic and theatrical devices, Cullen directs installations that draw on conventions of the carnivale to engage the viewer in a participatory encounter. He is interested in implicating the viewer within arts ability to stretch logic, time, material and experiential possibilities, and to entice the viewer into a consideration of a cosmological experience.
The stars, the heavens, the planet, atomic material; how they are represented in popular science and science fiction, and how in turn it is subjectivised in our imaginations is a launch pad for this work. Questions of humankind’s evolution interpenetrates science fictive subjectivities.
Cullen’s practice is interdisciplinary to include making art objects, directing installations and also manifests itself in instigating situations where energy can be transmitted between bodies, especially people.
Mark Cullen was born in Dublin in 1972. Works include MAIM XI for Irish Museum Modern Art, Temporary Portable Reservoirs at The Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery, Dublin and Siege House, London, Cosmic Annihilator, an installation at Pallas Heights and Open EV+A (curated by Dan Cameron 2005) Limerick City Gallery.
Recent works include STAR P*WER at Flicker, The Burren College Gallery, Star Gazing at 52° North at Synaesthesia Sat, Workhouse Birr Arts Festival. In 2005 he completed a Masters in Visual Arts Practices at DLIADT and was an award winner at EV+A 2005. In 2007 he attended a residency at El Levante in Rosario, Argentina. Cullen was curator of Darklight Digital Film Festival from 1999-2004. In 1995 with Brian Duggan he was the co-founding partner of Pallas Studios, Dublin. Pallas through their various guises and programmes have been key exponents of experimental art practice in Dublin.
He is also a director of Pallas Contemporary Projects a new space for experimental art in Dublin.
Backflash by Mark Cullen, at G126 Gallery Galway. Photograph by David Ruffles
