‘Because I have an active and obsessive eye‚ I'm interested in finding as much contentment as I possibly can. In my work I create problems and then solve them in order to feel peace.’
M. Grotjahn, ‘Mark Grotjahn & Alex Israel: In Conversation’, Garage Magazine, 14 July 2017
‘The best is when I lose myself in the actual, physical making of the thing. That’s my favorite feeling. It’s like I’m a professional ice skater and there’s nothing I can’t do.’
M. Grotjahn, ‘Mark Grotjahn & Alex Israel: In Conversation’, Garage Magazine, 14 July 2017
'It's one thing to know intellectually that there are no rules in art; it’s another thing to "feel" it.’
M. Grotjahn, 'Mark Grotjahn on His Latest Show', Artforum, 17 December 2018
‘“Abstract” technically means “to take out,” so the Impressionists would be abstract. Picasso would be abstract. The way I define nonobjective art means that it doesn’t reference something in the real world.’
M. Grotjahn in conversation with B. Powers, ‘Mark Grotjahn’, Purple Magazine, Fall/Winter 2017
‘Pollock is what I want from nonobjectibe painting, and it’s very expressive. I think that’s what Christopher Wool wants. And I think that’s what Brice Marden wants. They want this all-over thing that feels natural. I want to say that we all want the Jackson Pollock freedom, or at least I do.’
M. Grotjahn in conversation with B. Powers, ‘Mark Grotjahn’, Purple Magazine, Fall/Winter 2017
‘Their fascination lies in their transgressions, in the way they undulate between abstraction and figuration. Familiarity uncannily arises from welcoming foreignness and hybridity, and in this, the viewer realizes that we are all one.’
T. Dalton, ‘Freedom of Unfinishedness’, in Mark Grotjahn: Painted Sculpture, exh. cat., Anton Kern Gallery, New York; Berlin: Distanz, 2018
‘I think the masks are fascinating objects and also important as painting surfaces that allow for tremendous freedom and experimentation […]. You could see it as a way for Mark to give himself license to do things he wouldn’t ordinarily do, to paint in different ways.’
J. Strick, quoted in J. Finkel, ‘Childlike, but Hardly Child’s Play’, The New York Times, 7 May 2014
‘When you first declare yourself an avant-garde artist, you know, like in your teens or when you get to art school, Picasso is sort of the first stop. You draw a face with multiple eyes at a weird angle, and that’s your avant-garde statement. But to do that as an adult – knowing the cliché that it can be – to take that language and try making good works is something I find challenging and worth pursuing.’
B. Powers, 'Behind the Mask: An Interview with Mark Grotjahn’, Muse, no. 39, 2014, pp. 30–37
'To experience Grotjahn’s artwork is to both fix and traverse time, by witnessing how residual traces of his procedure and process act as lodgings, rich sites of security that allow the psychological and physical grounding needed to continue questing through the artist’s own history in relationship to his sociopolitical context.’
T. Dalton, ‘Freedom of Unfinishedness’, in Mark Grotjahn: Painted Sculpture, exh. cat., Anton Kern Gallery, New York; Berlin: Distanz, 2018, pp. 10–11
‘For Grotjahn, however, the process appears to be less about transforming the experience of nature into art than about transforming the experience of art through “natural” internalizing processes.’
L. Lumpkin, Hammer Projects: 1999–2009, Los Angeles: Hammer Museum, 2009, p. 234
‘Grotjahn’s practice displays a fraught relationship with realism. His roots in conceptualism may to some extent explain this. In a 90s, LA based project entitled “Sign Exchange”, Grotjahn exchanged painterly replicas of run-down shop signs by real restaurant and shop vendors. Here, the artist capitalised on the potency of the object and subverted ideas surrounding art and viewership: his exchanged signs remained in shops, as the originals went on display in the white cube. Much like his LA contemporaries (Ed Ruscha, Vija Celmins), his works were and continue to be frank in their content, offering a clearly demarcated scope and an almost darkly comic impassiveness.’
L. Earthy, ‘Mark Grotjahn’s Waking Formalism’, Emergent Magazine, September 2022
‘As a young artist I knew that art could be whatever you wanted it to be. That there weren’t any rules, and I believed that. Having said this, it’s one thing to know something intellectually, and it is something different to know it emotionally, to actually experience that idea. Perhaps heavy-handed, the exchange did that for me. That perfect space of the exchange, the time in the store, the clarity changed my life and perspective forever.’
M. Grotjahn, 'Signs 1993–1998 Rough Draft and Notes’, 8 January 2016
‘It’s hard to know exactly how it started or with what sign but the point was, I made a copy of the sign I saw and brought it to the store owner. I told the store owner I wanted to trade my sign for their sign. I told them I was an artist and this was my art. It’s a weird thing, the exchange, and I wanted to be open about my intention. No shenanigans. There didn’t need to be any extra confusion. Should be simple and straightforward, garner me a little trust and increase my odds of a successful exchange.’
Mark Grotjahn, 'Signs 1993–1998 Rough Draft and Notes’, 8 January 2016
Unless otherwise stated:
© Mark Grotjahn. Photo: courtesy of the artist
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