EV GALLERY, NEW YORK
SEPTEMBER 15TH 2022 – OCTOBER 8TH 2022
EV Gallery is pleased to present Mary Franck’s debut solo exhibition, Specimens, a sculptural series of new works.
Opening Reception: September 15, 2022 6-9 PM
Closing Reception: October 8th, 2022 6-9 PM
Visiting Hours: Saturdays 1-6 pm, and all other times by appointment.
Relief sculptures of fantastical biological specimens combine with generative organic animations in Mary Franck’s debut solo exhibition Specimens (2022). The series layers manual and algorithmic processes to create complex, organic forms: imagined specimens. Each piece lives both as a 3D print of a model and as a corresponding generative animation. These sculptures translate Franck’s practice of large-scale video installations and performances into more delicate and intimate work.
Specimens alludes to the way virtuality supplants the natural world with synthetic ones. The synthetic specimens embody the artist’s fascinations with natural systems and computational geometry. Geometry is an ancient art, now used to simulate and fabricate reality through VFX and the tensor calculations of AI neural networks. While the natural world becomes degraded and more remote, fully imaginary worlds created through computation proliferate. Geometry, once used to describe the world, now replaces it.
In this new series, intricate sculptural forms suggest plants, invertebrates, and multicellular colonies. Materialized in resin, a medium long associated with the preservation of insects, the sculptures’ translucence recalls membranes and fluids, eerily imitating organisms they may outlast. Their mounting and framing references naturalist traditions, further fictionalizing the
pieces. For each piece, the same algorithms and geometries that have been ossified as sculptures undulate and pulse as lush animations that accompany each 3D print.
Mary Franck
b. 1985, California
Lives and works in Brooklyn
Mary Franck is a media artist exploring presence and embodiment. She densely layers techniques and mediums to create her signature aesthetic of sensuous, unfolding complexity. Franck integrates sculpture, installation, video, performance, and digital technology to create spatial works that evolve over time.
Her work has appeared across the US and around the world in museums and festivals such as Sónar, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Soundwave Festival, The Gray Area, Mutek Montreal,
and A+D Architecture and Design Museum. Selected commissions include Carapace for the Société des Arts Technologiques, Gilded and Unreal for New Experiments in Art and Technology at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, and Seed for the Night Festival of Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Selected residencies include Autodesk’s Pier 9 Artist in Residence program, CounterPulse, and Million Fishes Arts Collective.