About: 

 

"Hello! My name is Mark Mothersbaugh, and I consider myself a contemporary social scientist. At least, that was the term we came up with when we were starting Devo back in the early ’70s to avoid the moniker “artist”, though of course, we were. We wanted to distinguish ourselves from much of what passed for “art” at the time, which didn’t resonate with us.

 

I fell in love with printmaking in my first year at KSU, back in 1968. I printed for almost a decade before touring with Devo made it nearly impossible, but I reignited that love in the mid-’80s when I met Richard Duardo, who had a screen-printing company in the then-industrial wasteland known as Traction Ave, in downtown LA. Whenever I had free time, I would head over there to print my art, eventually building a large body of work, including the silkscreen prints in this current show.

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This exhibition features two collections of screenprints created by Mark Mothersbaugh in the late 1980s and early 1990s at Richard Duardo’s Los Angeles printmaking studio. Included is the Postcard Superhero series, which began as 3.5 by 5 inch postcard sized collages constructed aboard Richard Branson’s boat in the 1970s and were later translated into large scale screenprints at Duardo’s studio. The series comprises six collages printed with three different inks, each revealing distinct messages depending on the light in which they are viewed. The works incorporate phosphorescent ink that glows in the dark, fluorescent ink visible under black light, and standard ink seen in daylight.

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The second collection, produced around the same time, reflects Mothersbaugh’s personal contemplations, expressed through his distinctive visual language.

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Through this evolving body of work, Mothersbaugh invites viewers to join him in contemplating life’s fundamental mysteries, offering an evolving journey into the mind of one of today’s most innovative artists.