Light is to the Natural World as Abstract Space is to Geometry. - Robert Grosseteste, 1112

Pierogi is pleased to present an exhibition of drawings by Mark Reynolds, his first at Pierogi. These drawings are passionately developed and result from many years of investigation into geometry. Reynolds describes drawing the various systems of geometric structures he works with as exciting, meditative, exhilarating, and humbling.

Since his days in art school, Reynolds was committed to drawing and visually constructing geometries, enough to make this his life’s work. Although he has great respect for and is aware that his work has elements of Geometric Abstraction, Hard-edge painting, Minimalism, and other similar methods of drawing and painting, his work is more involved with the origins of geometry, how geometry works, especially with the human mind, how it builds things, and how it orders space and records the development of an infinite variety of choices and structures because of the ratios and relationships inherent in the system of geometric forms.

Many of the drawings in [this exhibition] “are taken from meldings of systems of geometry that are not related nor numerically commensurate, and attempting to make them so. I call these compositions, ‘Marriages of Incommensurables,’ and ‘Unions of Opposites.’ I am interested in the structures and the images – the forms – that result from these meldings.” (Reynolds, 2013)

“The nature of geometry is to compose. Each resulting composition is uniquely harmonic by the method in which it was drawn and what was chosen to be the unifying geometric principle for that drawing. Much depends on this original marriage, what specifically was being employed in the geometric construction involved in the union. Certain principles of geometry – ratios, proportioning systems, harmonic resonances or discordances – interface within the relationship. I make it visible by drawing the resulting geometric forms.”

These compositions are structures and spaces conceived by the nature of geometric form, and the interaction geometry has with a curious mind. Mark seeks to discover if this relationship is inherent in geometry, or within the mind as a construct a priori. More curiously, what is the relationship between geometric form and human thought?

Mark Reynolds is an artist, geometer, and educator. He has Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees in Art and Art Education from Towson University in Towson, Maryland. He also received an Andelot Fellowship to the University of Delaware for post-graduate work in drawing and printmaking. Additionally, Reynolds has been teaching courses in geometry and philosophical geometry to graduate and undergraduate classes at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco for over twenty years and draws every day.