The work of the North American artist Mark Dorf questions the relationship of human beings with nature and the position we occupy within it. He fixes on the words and images that describe it, exercising a hierarchical relationship between people and their natural environment.

What kind of language can be used to rethink the destructive anthropocentric relationship with the environment? Is it possible to think about nature from a non-human perspective? Dorf’s work incorporates the contradictions that occur when trying to change a point of view and moves away from traditional representations that place human beings at its centre. To do this, he fuses the visual references of a romantic vision of nature with others derived from digital media and the Internet. The disturbing strangeness of his images gives us a different, abnormal perspective. This is a vision in which technology is not an alien, external element to the human being, but a tool in its own right which can develop and be steered in new directions.

Projection and Lenny are two of the images that are part of the Contours project together with an audiovisual piece, and Dorf has expanded them in the form of a triptych and a diptych respectively to be displayed at the Getxo petrol station.

Born in EEUU in 1988, Mark Dorf is based in New York. His practice includes photography, video, digital media, and sculpture. In his most recent work, Dorf is influenced by human’s perceptions of and interactions with “Nature”, urbanism, design, and virtual environments. Hes work crafts a vision of a more inclusive future both ecologically and socially, helping to navigate away from environmental collapse in the Anthropocene and imagine a New Nature. Dorf has exhibited internationally at the Museum Für Gestaltung, Zurich, Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Houston Center for Photography, Le Lieu Unique, Frankfurter Kunstverein and The Lima Museum of Contemporary Art, amongst many others. Dorf’s work is found in many collections private and public including the Foam Amsterdam, the Fidelity Investments Collection, and the Deutsche Bank Collection. Dorf’s books are housed in libraries across the world such as The Thomas J. Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library at Yale University, and the Avery Library at Columbia University.

Mark Dorf (USA, 1988)
Contours

2021 Edition
Outdoor installation
Venue: Old petrol station