Fresh Faces

Fresh Faces is an unforgiving body of new work by Mark Gilbert, a young Scottish artist. This work coincides with his current touring exhibition Saving Faces.

Gilbert's intensely intimate paintings, portraying enlarged close-ups of faces, miss nothing. Every blemish, crease and scar is flaunted creating an uncomfortable atmosphere between the work and the viewer.

However, despite this harsh reality in Gilbert's work, there is also a sense of vulnerability. His acutely personal paintings capture their subject as though they have been frozen in a transitional expression, a moment in time. His subjects are diverse in age, race and orientation. The result is a brooding sense of familiarity.

During his time as Artist in Residence at the Royal London Hospital, Mark's work became entwined with the psychological recovery of his subjects who were undergoing facial surgery and had also agreed to sit as subjects for Mark's project. It aided in their healing process as well as providing them with the opportunity to talk to someone who was not in the medical field. This time gave Gilbert valuable visual, emotional and personal experience, which has continued to inform his current work.

'My work has continued to utilise and analyse the photo mechanical image, intensifying the level of seeing and then distilling that information.'
Mark Gilbert

Mark was born in Glasgow in 1969 and studied at Glasgow School of Art. He has shown extensively in Britain and also in Europe and Japan, he now lives and works in London.

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