Mark Jenkins

MARK JENKINS (Virginia, 1970).
"Like father like son," 2017.
Pair of mixed media sculptures.
Measurements: 180 x 90 x 50 cm (the largest).

"Like father like son", could be the alternative title of "Like father like son", a pair of hyperrealistic sculptures representing a boy and a man who hide their identities behind a balaclava, wearing casual clothes and holding in one hand a metal bar. The black color that covers the figures turns them into metaphorical shadows, into mental projections of the collective fears that grip us in the cities. Mark Jenkins gained fame and notoriety for this type of street characters (vagrants, hooded, suspicious characters for their appearance or for adopting strange postures) that he placed in the public space without prior notice and that on numerous occasions brought into action the police, firemen or ambulance corps.

Mark Jenkins is an American artist who creates street sculptural installations. He uses the "street as a stage", where his sculptures interact with the environment, including passers-by who unwittingly become actors. His installations often attract the attention of the police. His work has been described as whimsical, macabre, shocking and situationist. Jenkins cites Juan Muñoz as his initial inspiration. In addition to creating art, he also teaches his sculptural techniques and installation practices through workshops. He currently lives in Washington, DC. In 2005 he began working with Sandra Fernandez on the Storker Project, a series in which transparent casts of toy babies are installed in different cities to interact with the environment around them[10]. Jenkins and Fernandez went on to create other installations with ribbon animals: dogs playing in garbage, giraffes nibbling plastic bags from trees, and ducks swimming in ditches. Other outdoor projects exploring cultural interference include Meterpops, Traffic-Go-Round and Signs of Spring. In 2006 Jenkins began the Embed series. Tape casts were filled with newsprint and cement and dressed to create hyper-realistic sculptural duplicates of himself and Fernandez. These new highly realistic sculptural installations created confusion and caused some passersby to call 911, resulting in police and, on occasion, rescue units arriving on their "scene." In 2008 Jenkins collaborated with Greenpeace on an awareness campaign, Plight of the Polar Bears, to draw attention to the melting of the Arctic ice caps. Jenkins created realistic figures that looked like homeless people, but with stuffed polar bear heads. Jenkins has participated in public art events such as Interference (Barcelona, 2008), BELEF (Belgrade, 2009), Dublin Contemporary 2011, Inside Out(Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, 2009), Living Layers (Rome, 2012), Les Vraisemblables(Nuit Blanche, Paris, 2014), Passages Insolites (Ex Muro, Quebec, 2021) Embed Bodies (Un Été au Havre, Le Havre, 2022). In interiors, Jenkins has exhibited internationally in galleries and museums, as well as continuing his Embed series in public settings such as cafes, schools and building lobbies. Solo exhibitions include Glazed Paradise at Diesel Gallery (Tokyo, 2008), Meaning is Overrated at Carmichael Gallery (Los Angeles, 2009), Terrible Horrible at Ruttkowski, Gallery (Cologne, 2014), Moment of Impact at Lazarides Gallery (London, 2015), and Remix at L'Arsenal (Montreal, 2016). In 2018, he and Fernandez created Project84, in London, England The work was designed to raise awareness of adult male suicide. Commercially, Jenkins collaborated with fashion brand Balenciaga.