Mark R. Smith: Facebook AIR Program Installation
Installation by Mark R. Smith at the Facebook facility in Seattle, WA
Detail of the installation
Mark R. Smith recently installed the commissioned work titled Portals and Rabbit Holes for the Facebook Artist In Residency (AIR) Program in July of 2021. As the title suggests, the artist considered how internet access and social media use can open up dramatic possibilities (portals, but it can also lead to nothing–rabbit holes). The site at Facebook's Arbor facility (Seattle, WA) posed an intriguing challenge because of its large scale and centrally located elevator doors, which required the art to engage predominantly with the spaces in the margins. To respond to this challenge, Smith created de-centralized compositions that unify the walls and acknowledge the elevator door function as a portal through which people physically enter and disappear.
A base of highly tactile felt fabric soaked in a transparent painting medium covers each wall to accentuate its topographical qualities and establish the distinct sensation of a physical landscape. Smith used striped, recycled clothing to construct concentric forms and geometric compositions to create points of entry or departure.
The project serves as a metaphorical map inviting viewers to travel into these works and follow a circuitous pathway connecting with abstract collective communities. As in modernist philosophy, there is a utopian yearning behind this work, a sense that abstract geometry attempts to harmonize a disjunctive world.
Artist Mark R. Smith working during his time at the Facebook AIR Program in Seattle, WA