Mark Lewis

The Charles H. Scott Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition featuring two new film works by Canadian-born, UK-based artist Mark Lewis. These works, Brown’s Point and City Road, March 24, 2012, like Lewis’ other films currently being shown at the Vancouver Art Gallery’s Offsite, speak to the artist’s interest in the medium of film and in the way filmic devices are employed in cinematic language. However, unlike the series at Offsite, the films at the Charles H. Scott Gallery are more photographic having been composed and shot from a fixed point. In talking about his work, Lewis has stated that he is “interested in how the origins of film are, in some respects, in the picture that starts to transform. I try to understand the extent to which one can strip film down to be an experience of depiction, of showing something.”

Since the mid-nineties Lewis has been experimenting with the medium of film. It was an obvious progression from his earlier photographic works that were heavily influenced by film theory especially the work of Victor Burgin and feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey.  In recent years Lewis has been increasingly engaged in a process of paring down the elements of a film to the bare minimum. At the same time he fosters the viewer’s ability to animate narrative possibilities, they anticipate potential fictive scenarios based on their own understanding of cinema.