Mark Bennett

following on the tremendous critical reaction to his architectural renderings of television’s situation-comedy locales, mark moore gallery is pleased to present a body of concurrent work by mark bennett, entitled the effects of fords on barbara, from april 5 - may 10.

beginning in mid-may 1997, the corcoran gallery of art in washington, d.c. will present a gallery one exhibition for mark bennett, which will include selections from both series of work (exhibition dates: May 17 - AUGUST 10, 1997; traveling thereafter).

the effects of fords on barbara is an on-going suite of narrative collages, begun by the artist in 1982, and will be constituted of 137 works overall when fully realized.

barbara is a 1960s everywoman, whose fetish for the higher lifestyle the time heralded is both highly comedic and ultimately tragic, as suburbia becomes the place of things, and the most important thing is the automobile, and in particular, fords (thunderbirds, mustangs, falcons, lincoln-mercury ).

the automobile as status icon, as sanctuary and ultimately, as literal escape - are the key points for bennett in this series.

culled from magazines and books of the 1960s and 1970s
( House beautiful, vogue, true confession, photoplay, popular mechanics, life ), bennett utilizes xeroxed and hand-tinted images on pantone paper, often re-using strong visual vignettes in more than one work.

barbara’s voice is bennett’s voice, as evidenced in the artist’s addition of a narrative typed directly into each work; many of the works from this series are also noted as geographically specific, whether or not the artist is personally familiar with the real locale.