Mark
Mann
Are We There Yet? Laurence Miller Gallery
October 16 – November 26, 2003
On October 16, 2003, Laurence Miller Gallery will open Are We There
Yet?, Mark Mann’s second installment of fantasy pictures
based on 1960s and 1970s vintage postcards. This new show extends
the disquieting nostalgia of his earlier exhibition, Wish You Were
Here, in which the promise of fun and recreation is constantly
being thwarted by some unseen, yet always suggested eeriness.
The stuff of family vacation provides the context for Mark Mann’s
pictures, depicting intrepid suburbanites as they make their way
onto the highways and byways of America. These travelers call to
mind summer migrations – families on the move – in
search of some unspoken ideal, be it beauty or fun or excitement.
Along the way they end up in generic motel rooms (Waiting Room,
2003) or banal tourist attractions (Log Jam, 2002) or on a journey
to who knows where (Long Highway, 2003). With more than a bit of
irony, when the elusive Mecca is finally reached, it too is nothing
more than a low-rent motel.
Yet despite their allusions to a bygone era, these pictures are
ironically modern in vision and felling. Mann uses digital technology
to compose and print his pictures, and displaces the nostalgic postcard
imagery with layers of mystery and humor; sort of a visualization
of bill Bryson meets the Twilight Zone.
Mark Mann’s work is in the permanent collection of the Los
Angeles County Museum of Art, the Norton Museum in West Palm Beach,
the Progressive Corporation and numerous private collections.
