My work stems from an interest in the catalogue of graphics that code our world. Culling from the history of Western mark making, from engravings to maps to diagrams, I reference line’s role as mediator between the outside world and our understanding of it . Line is a unit of representation. Extend it, divide it, curl it and you have altered its meaning. Each character holds shared meanings, allowing for a common language - a system for translating the three-dimensional world onto a two-dimensional plane.

I seek out lines that suggest, among other things, particular textures, movements, or actions and drop them into a spatial void, left to drift without context or representational form. Instead, they build a new ecosystem, colliding and enmeshing with each other to create an atmosphere of fractured meaning and distorted perspectives. Our visual history is broken apart into a landscape of abstract language, one that questions how our visual language is shaped and how it shapes us.

contact: mark.laurin@gmail.com

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