Let My Sculptures Tell You...
2008-07-30

 Let My Sculptures Tell You...  

--------------------------------------An Introduction of Mark Firth and  his works 

Maybe he is not famous enough, but if I say he has worked with a variety of media and materials, especially aluminum and steel, as well as lasers and holograms. Then you will feel that you're being cheated, "He is a sculptor?" Are you kidding? Sorry to say that I'm terribly serious and so with Mark Firth.

All of these are attributed to his fascination with engineering, the sciences, physics and the history of scientific phenomena. No surprise as Mark Firth had got a background in mechanical engineering before he changed his major into art at another college. And in 1979 he received travel scholarship to Japan to study further. After that he has taught in a number of art colleges, including Camberwell, but now, he is working full time as an artist in his own studio for almost twenty years.

Sometimes Mark Firth is more than an artist. Though he claims not to be a systems artist, he treads a path that is only a hair's breadth distant. Gradually the forms of his work have become progressively simpler, involving the milling of basic cuboids, combined in ways that involve both reduction and magnification. So If Mark Firth is not an artist, he also can be a genius in science. His most famous sculpture is called Primary Sections and it dominated Library Court with its architectural scale and design in the 2005 Exhibition held by the Jesus College, which aimed to collect the modern art and communicate with artists all over the world. So many professionals in this area are interested in his remarkable piece of artwork, or maybe strange enough, but no one would deny the talent of Mark Firth. 

Primary Sections reduces to four the array of basic shapes that can be derived from the same proportions, while magnifying the scale on which we would normally encounter such shapes. The forms commonly known as I-beams, Z-purlins, T-sections and C-sections constitute the most fundamental elements of construction in the modern built environment. They represent the most efficient combinations of solids and voids, and the most elegant ratio between strength and weight, employed almost universally in the girders that structure so much of what we take for granted in the world around us. It does not involve much exaggeration to think of them as the constitutive elements of modernity. Firth has exchanged their utility for an emphasis on their principles of design, by placing equally balanced cross-sections in a symmetrical arrangement uniting them in single sculptural statement. Heidegger's understanding of dwelling as the most significant way in which humanity partakes of Being, and the most fundamental way in which it takes the measure of existence, is reflected in this sculpture which revolves questions of order, measure, and habitation and the animating relationship between them.

So from the material, the process of the design and the sculpture, we can find out Mark Firth's idea of sculpture is modern but pragmatische, simple but safe. This is what many artists are pursuing in their life of design. But Firth first gets the answer. This idea can be used in all sorts of art, even in our daily life. With this notion, Mark Firth has exhibited his work regularly in Britain and Europe since 1996, and his sculpture is in numerous public and private collections internationally.