Mark Fox

(Cincinnati, Ohio, 1963 - )

North America, American

A visual artist, puppeteer and filmmaker, Mark Fox cites his upbringing in a German Roman Catholic enclave in Cincinnati as informing his work. As an undergraduate student at Washington University in St. Louis (BFA, 1985) the artist made “very dark surreal landscape” paintings with human figures. In graduate school at Stanford University (MFA, 1988) Fox, enamored with the flat bands of color used in Medieval manuscripts, began to eliminate the figure and paint abstractly, eventually creating minimalist canvases that featured striated fields in gold tones. Upon returning to Cincinnati, he discovered that he missed the element of storytelling that the figure provided. Determining that painting was ill-suited to addressing narrative, Fox established and became artistic director for Saw Theater, a non-profit puppet company that toured throughout the country. In 2000, Fox began to refocus his attention on making art, turning to production that was paper based. Filling notebooks with drawings, Fox began exploring using drawings as materials for sculptures. Manipulation is a key theme in Fox’s work and he frequently transcribes Roman Catholic doctrine in compositions that at once invite and deny access to their contents. Among the techniques Fox has used in his work are cutting out and reassembling texts, geometric forms and symbols; hand-corrugating cardboard for sculptures and constructing surfaces from cut-out drops of watercolor or acrylic paint. One of the artists showcased in Intersections: Artists Master Line and Space at the Akron Art Museum, Fox has had his work featured in one-person exhibitions at Hiram Butler Gallery in Houston, Robert Miller Gallery in New York, Shaheen Modern & Contemporary in Cleveland, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia, Herbert F. Johnson Museum at Cornell University and the Cincinnati Art Museum.

View objects by this artist.