Louder than Bombs   Marie Koetje and Mark Schoening

June 21 to July 28, 2024
Artists’ Reception, First Thursday, July 5, 6 to 8PM

> LINK TO IMAGES FROM THE EXHIBITION

The paintings by Marie Koetje and Mark Schoening share similarities in more than paint. Both artists make work that visualize the sometimes overwhelming nature of living in a media-saturated, information-overloaded, hyper-explosive time in history. When reading what these two artists write about their work, one encounters the word “information” in both: “information overload” and “information explosions.” Both artists pack so much depth into the two-dimensions of their surfaces with layers of oil, acrylic, and spray paint that the chaos of the worlds they each create pulls us in while at the same time pushing back out at us. The intense renderings of time/space/objects/noise/communication make the work truly louder than bombs.

Marie Koetje
“The constant task of sorting, filtering, sifting and making meaning of information in an age of information overload presents a set of problems and possibilities that interest me as a painter. With influences ranging from 17th century vanitas painting to contemporary video game graphics, my work is informed by excess, transience, and the interplay of actuality and artifice. Allusions to the collapsed space of digital screens and the clunky forms of outdated technology can be found in my work amidst spots of color that assert themselves against the picture plane, bands of light that pose as tangible entities, and jumbled forms that jostle against one another in densely layered compositions.

“My paintings are loosely based on imagined scenarios of ordinary spaces integrated with, or invaded by, an aggregation of signals, devices, gadgets and streams of information. I usually begin each piece by constructing a rational pictorial space which serves as backdrop for these otherwise immaterial and intangible components to take shape and become visible. The identity of form within my work vacillates between specific and ambiguous, often suggesting shapes that flirt with the notion of objecthood.and spaces that bear a relationship to reality but are not concretely situated in time.

“I approach painting as a site where dialogue exists in the relationship of parts, including in the relationship between the physical and illusory qualities of paint itself. Working with oil, spray paint, acrylic, and enamel, I employ the medium as both an autonomous material on its own terms and as a descriptive, fluid tool. Instances where thickly applied paint takes on dimensional properties interrupt the appearance of the flat surface, calling back to the canvas as object and serving as reminders of the slippage between reality and illusion.”

Marie’s work has been exhibited in Portland, Vancouver, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and Edinburgh. She received a BFA with honors from the School of Visual Arts in 2008 and was the recipient of a fellowship to the Yale-Norfolk program at Yale University in 2006. Marie lives in Portland, OR.

Mark Schoening
“My friend, six months of a beard upon his face, had just flown back from Georgia, the last stop after hiking the entire Appalachian Trail. I picked him up at the airport and, after the hug, the small talk, after the moments when he had my eyes to concentrate upon, the fear set in, the anxiety; I watched his head snap to attention at the slightest movement. To me, it was the usual airport motion. To him, it was as if he saw strangers firing shotguns at the ceiling. The barrage was too much, the information, the quick succession, and for the week he stayed in my apartment I would often catch him with his eyes closed dreaming far off dreams back toward desolation.

“I do not have the luxury of escape. In this century, in this moment, few of us do. Information piles up: the advertisements, the mechanisms, the media, the people. I am attached to it, in the midst of it, a part of it. However, as a painter, I am also a witness and a reactionary. My paintings are manifestations of the same barrage my friend shied away from.  The paintings speak of information explosions, where an entire environment can be physically contained in a seamlessly presented two-dimensional world. It is a reaction to the age of technology we find ourselves living in. The way we look at, perceive, and process ideas has changed, and because of that, because of what the viewer brings to the experience, these painting could not have been created in any other time. This is not so much a comment on myself as it is the viewer. They now have the ability to take in numerous ideas and aesthetic techniques all at once as a consequence of their everyday lives. What I am doing is letting the ideas fall in a frozen plane, allowing for further investigation.”

Mark’s work has been exhibited in Boston, Brooklyn, Los Angeles, and Copenhagen, including the Decordova Museum’s 2008 Annual. He has been a featured artist in New American Paintings, and his work has appeared in Beautiful Decay, Flaunt, and the Huffington Post. Mark has upcoming exhibitions in Dallas and Portland. He received his BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston in 2006 and he lives in Los Angeles, CA.

Left image: Marie Koetje, Astrologer’s Table, 2012, oil, enamel and spray paint on canvas 52 x 44 inches
Right image: Mark Schoening, snowcrash, 2012, acrylic, latex, spray paint, silkscreen ink, and resin on panel 40 x 30 inches