I stumbled across the work of Mark Jenkins a couple of days ago, and was immediately taken with the wonderful, funny, surreal and often deeply serious ideas in his work. Also the fact that it is such a public form of art. Not for him the secluded and almost religious atmosphere of an art gallery, nope, his work is placed in public places all over the world.
His work for the greater part, simply stated, consists of statues of human beings, dressed in normal clothing, but placed in some very strange situation – Leaning against a wall, with its head apparently buried in the wall such as this one below…..
With a lot of his more or less “realistic” work, it is actually pretty hard to be sure it is in fact a statue, and not simply one or more people behaving rather oddly, as you can see from the images below…
I love this one! She is not real…..
Some of his work has a very macabre tone to it, scary looking men in hoodies, and in one case, actually threatening visitors to the place where it is set up…
See what I mean? This one would scare the hell out of me if I came across it as that woman is about to do.
Here are a few more rather random bits of his intriguing work for you to enjoy.
This is a rather entertaining idea…
The girl being hugged is part of the work, not a real girl… nice concept isn’t it?
Dear God!
So, those are some samples of his work to give you the merest smattering of the world of Mark Jenkins. If you want to know more, and I hope you do, here is a link to his website, well worth a visit, as it contains a bewildering range of his work, all of it weird, wonderful and engaging in one way or another.
Link: Mark Jenkins
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