Mark Stebbins: Supersampler
Supersampler is an exhibition featuring a decade鈥檚 worth of work by London-based painter, Mark Stebbins. Inspired by the history of image making, digital media and textiles, Stebbins鈥 paintings explore the potential of the grid form through realism and abstraction alike.
Often containing thousands of tiny squares hand-painted with hundreds of different tones and hues, Stebbins鈥 paintings translate source imagery to pose what he calls 鈥渧isual questions.鈥 By building up and breaking down these images, the artist plays with colour, detail, texture, and contrast to impact what the viewer sees. Here, paint strokes act as stitches and pixels, often distorted.
Stebbins鈥 works break free from traditional painting conventions to draw on the rich histories of digital technology, art and creative practice. With a mysterious, ghostly quality, his paintings capture the fragmented nature of memory and the passage of time. A new series employs symbols from historic embroideries found in Museum London鈥檚 artifact collection, while other pieces feature vibrant, kaleidoscopic effects that nod to key moments in art history鈥攍ike 19th-century pointillism and the hard-edge abstraction of the 1950s and 60s. Throughout these diverse influences, Stebbins鈥 work invites us to reflect on themes of originality, labour, and the evolving role of painting in our increasingly virtual world.
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Supersampler is an exhibition featuring a decade鈥檚 worth of work by London-based painter, Mark Stebbins. Inspired by the history of image making, digital media and textiles, Stebbins鈥 paintings explore the potential of the grid form through realism and abstraction alike.
Often containing thousands of tiny squares hand-painted with hundreds of different tones and hues, Stebbins鈥 paintings translate source imagery to pose what he calls 鈥渧isual questions.鈥 By building up and breaking down these images, the artist plays with colour, detail, texture, and contrast to impact what the viewer sees. Here, paint strokes act as stitches and pixels, often distorted.
Stebbins鈥 works break free from traditional painting conventions to draw on the rich histories of digital technology, art and creative practice. With a mysterious, ghostly quality, his paintings capture the fragmented nature of memory and the passage of time. A new series employs symbols from historic embroideries found in Museum London鈥檚 artifact collection, while other pieces feature vibrant, kaleidoscopic effects that nod to key moments in art history鈥攍ike 19th-century pointillism and the hard-edge abstraction of the 1950s and 60s. Throughout these diverse influences, Stebbins鈥 work invites us to reflect on themes of originality, labour, and the evolving role of painting in our increasingly virtual world.