Mark Themann
13 Voids

This exhibition presents 13 voids over 13 days where each day the space is left rigorously empty, without the addition or subtraction of anything. At the entrance to the gallery, a music stand will face the open entrance. A sheet of paper on the music stand, bearing a text, will contextualize ‘each void’. This text changes daily. Texts never repeat - daily a ‘new void’. The nature of the texts reference void as potentiality, which acknowledges that (paradoxically) the void is fertile and there is no such thing as ‘nothing’.

Artist’s Talk: 1–2pm Tuesday 28 August off-site: UniSA City West Campus Hawke Building, Room H-2-16

Dates / Extended Opening Hours: 28 August – 9 September 2012
gallery open daily Tue–Fri: 11am–5pm Sat–Mon: 2pm–5pm

Melbourne-based Mark Themann is a visual artist with a significant international profile, at the progressive end of contemporary art. For 25 years he has been working in large-scale sculptural installations, video installations, drawing, performance art and cross-disciplinary collaborations. His work has been collected by the: Museum of Modern Art New York, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, CDLA France, State Library of Victoria, Getty Foundation Los Angeles and other Museums in the USA, UK, France and Switzerland. To date he has realized over thirty solo exhibitions internationally in institutions such as: The Art Gallery of NSW, Location One New York, Palais de Tokyo Paris, Museum of Installation London, Artspace Los Angeles. He was the first artist to work with the Palais de Tokyo Paris and his many group exhibitions span institutions and galleries in Australia, Europe, UK, USA. He is the recipient of numerous awards by: The Pollock- Krasner Foundation, The Goethe Insitut, The Brown Foundation/ Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Australia Council For the Arts, to name a few.

Starting mid-August 2011, Mark was awarded two six month artist-in-residencies back to back in Berlin by the progressive centre, Lage Egal, and the world famous Künstlerhaus Bethanien, with each residency accompanied by a solo exhibition in their high profile gallery spaces. Künstlerhaus Bethanien is the most prestigious artist-in-residency program in Berlin where artists cannot apply personally, but are selected by their country of origin. Künstlerhaus Bethanien’s direct invitation to Mark is an unheard of and rare honour.

13 Voids, catalogue [PDF]