12.11.11 — 01.21.12
Mark Booth’s exhibition THE SEA IS REPRESENTED BY AN IRREGULAR SHAPE is situated around Booth’s evolving audio project God is Represented by the Sea. God is Represented by the Sea is a recursive language-based audio work.
In God is Represented by the Sea, Booth devises and presents an alternative set of signifiers, a simple list-based system in which objects, perceptions, and concepts are represented by other objects, perceptions, and concepts. This “code” invites those who encounter it to consider the shifting nature of experience, recognition, association, and comprehension. God is Represented by the Sea was written as a response to the code-based works of the remarkable French artist Guy de Cointet.
The title THE SEA IS REPRESENTED BY AN IRREGULAR SHAPE is the second line of the audio work God is Represented by the Sea. All subsequent exhibitions and iterations of the work will be titled with successive lines in the text. Additional lines are added to the list with each exhibition, so that the text is perpetually evolving and increasing in length. As a result, the system of representation also expands with each exhibition, with the theoretically possible eventual result that every object, perception, and concept in the frame of human experience could be represented by some other object, perception, or concept.
The exhibition at devening projects + editions consists of a three channel audio installation of God is Represented by the Sea with instrumentals by the Chicago musical bellows and electronics duo Coppice, a durational live audio performance of the work, paintings on paper and polyester film visualizing lines from the audio text, and a site-specific installation in adhesive vinyl.
Mark Booth and Coppice will perform God is Represented by the Sea, with guest vocalists and animation by Orla McHardy, on January 14, 2012 in the gallery.
Mark Booth is a Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist. His exhibitions and projects include God is Represented by the Sea, Adds Donna, Chicago, Nothing to Do with Wizards, O’Connor Gallery, Dominican University, River Forest, IL., pierecednightstarvoice at Schalter Gallery, Berlin, Germany, The Stinging Tentacles Of Anxiety That Constrict The Heart Are Healed By The Light Of An Inner Sun, Gahlberg Gallery, College of DuPage, Glen Ellyn, IL., Spanish Still Life (or a large list of merged animals), Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, IL, Endless (Perverted by Language/Delay 1968), UBS 12×12, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, IL., and a collaborative performance work Quiet (A disruptive fog (or a hogshead full of vapor called memory) in Chicago, Illinois. Booth has performed and exhibited in the United States, Scandinavia, and Germany. Booth is an assistant professor in the Writing Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and teaches creative writing and sound.
