Marcus Cope Untitled (shower seen), Oil on canvas, 180 x 132.5cm, 2010
Marcus Cope works as a painter liberates itself from all easy categorisation by presenting himself and us with problems not to solve but to question. Again and again. The image-maker simultaneously as iconoclast, perhaps: not dilettante eclecticism, but a sardonic joy and (at one and the same time) delighted cynicism at the limitless (im)possibilities of painting. Of course he can paint photo-realistically (who couldn’t in any case learn?) Of course he can adapt tropes, seize on motifs, deconstruct the canvas, make a mess. But there’s more, there’s always more: with energy, imagination and sly wit each painting thwarts its own outcome (what, Cope might ask, is the point of painting when the result is a foregone conclusion?) Within each canvas there are points at which, the result already apparent he (clearly) takes off at once down some non-signposted path.
This is it.
Marcus Cope, DON’T FILL MY HEAD WITH YOUR SUBVERSIVE NONSENSE!, 2010, oil on canvas, 35 x 106cm.
www.re-title.com/
www.studio1-1.co.uk
About the artist
Marcus lives and works in sunny south London. Marcus was a co-founder and curator of the Marmite Prize for Painting. Marcus Cope was born in Bath in 1980, and now lives and works in London. He received his BA in Fine Art from Coventry University in 2002, and MA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art and Design, London, in 2006. Selected solo exhibitions include: In the Balance, etc, Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin (virtual) curated by Andrew Renton, (2020); Moonlighting, studio1.1, London (2018); All The Chairs Are Broken, studio1.1, London (2015); My First New York Show: Looked Good on Paper, Neue Froth Kunsthalle, Brighton (2013). He has shown work in numerous group exhibitions including Drawing Biennial 2021, Drawing Room, London (2021); Vision X, Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin (2019); Pareidolia, Daniel Benjamin Gallery (2019); Nature Morte which toured to Guildhall Art Gallery, London (2017); National Museum, Wroc?aw, Poland (2017); Bohusläns Museum, Sweden (2016); Hå gamle prestegard, Stavanger, Norway (2015) and was accompanied by the Thames and Hudson publication of the same name.
