Mark Grotjahn

Mark Grotjahn’s innate connection to the natural world is channeled into abstract compositions that engage with various motifs, including butterfly wings, water, and rays of light. His paintings, drawings, and sculptures consider the sublime using skewed angles, multiple vanishing points, and restricted color schemes to portray volume and irrational depth in two-dimensions. His works are reminiscent of Op Art in their illusory quality and Russian Constructivism in their utopian ideals. Spontaneous marks exist alongside more deliberate and severe lines, seeking to uncover the ways in which nature might still be influenced by his own design.


Grotjahn has shown at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Kunstmuseum Thun, Switzerland, Portland Art Museum, Oregon, Aspen Museum of Art, Colorado, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Kunstverein Freiburg, Germany, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota, New Museum, New York, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, and MoMA PS 1, New York, among many others. He was included in the 2006 Whitney Biennial, the Carnegie International in 2004, and The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World at the Museum of Modern at in 2014. 

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Articles

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