Formally this work considers pools of spacetime constrained by extra-dimensional structures (largely purple) or constructs similar to the boundaries of reality described in some descriptions of string theory as branes or containing allusions to quantum states or dark matter, while attempting to embrace the idea of a shape to reality (described visually) which is non-scalar while using the constraints of physical materials. Embracing the limitations of a medium to express something beyond its capability was the initial challenge the artist wanted to tackle with these works and to let his intuition guide him through texts of science, math, and theology to create a form that is observable as a frame of the present. A holographic reality suspended between possible future and past states in the system based on a collective awareness embraced by humanity. all states of time and dimension interlocked, and only partially intelligible.
The title, Dependent Arising is a concept that inspired me when researching the shape of reality because Quantum Mechanics largely took its shape because of a Co-teaching/learning collaboration between David Bohm, author of "Quantum Mechanics" textbook and author of the Bohmian interpretation of Quantum Mechanics and the 14th Dalai Lama. Buddhism has always embraced vibrations and resonance as foundations of reality, Einstein struggled with it, and it wasn't until the Western science tackled the particle-wave duality as an inherent foundation of reality did we begin to question an interwoven connectedness to all points known and unknown in the system of reality as simultaneous, connected, and fractionally revealed to our awareness.
Under this model, the shape of reality has less to do with a timeline from the big bang alpha origin to the eventuality of the causal structure, which created the present in a particular vector transcending a fixed spacetime constraint. It instead suggests that there is a superposition of all states of known and unknown in existence. Some of this existence has found a temporary equilibrium similar to the concept of spacetime which we are aware of and are comfortable accepting as the current state of the system. But science is always approaching a more correct answer while understanding that the previous answer was incomplete, and it is a question that requires the communities of science, technology, philosophy, and art to solve en tandem.
- Subject Matter: The shape of reality, consciousness, and cosmos. Reconciling quantum mechanics and string theory with general relativity through some Buddhist, String Theory, and Holographic reality .
- Collections: CAC, In Medias Res: The Infinite Genesis of the Universal Present
Stafford's current body of work forms at the intersections between the physical reality we inhabit and the intangible structures heightening our experience as supported by our collective intuitions and collaborations. Emerging from digital image, drawing, painting, and sculpture, In Medias Res approaches forms between two and three dimensions that wrestle with the nature of reality, time, and space where subject and context, frame and format are competitively interwoven in their stated compositions. A struggle to understand the forms and formation of reality and awareness, between ourselves and our connections to the unknown.
Having grown up with epilepsy mostly in the vast and rugged environments of Alaska, Arizona, and New York over a few decades, he has always been aware of, and interested in the network of collaborating and competing narratives that correlate to our present. In this extended and elastic notion of time and physicality, his work has captured many of our struggles with identity and purpose beginning at the turn of the millennium, and continues into our entangled excitement and intrigue about the nature of existence as we begin reaching into the stars, which he hopes is an effort to continue building the network of the human narrative without leaving Earth behind, strives to grasp the nature of reality.
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Mark Stafford lives and works in New York City and was born in 1978. He grew up in Anchorage, Alaska, and went to undergraduate school in Tucson, Arizona. Extreme environments impressed upon him the incredible vastness of nature and the order to which it directs our destiny. These concrete localities opened his mind to a deeper connection to existence and the feedback loop we engage in as both its inhabitants and co-creators. He earned an MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and has exhibited his work nationally and internationally, including SCOPE Miami, Yellowstone Museum of Art, Ground Floor Gallery, SLAG Gallery, Black and White Gallery, Socrates Sculpture Park in New York, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, New American Paintings, Vivid in the UK, and Open Art in Beijing, China.