Mark Lewis

Mark Lewis, Canadian-born and British-based artist, turned from photography to filmmaking during the mid-‘90s and started to create a series of works that explore the history and structure of cinema. His films are generally shot with 35 mm cameras and with a professional cast and crew. Shown as large-scale projections in exhibition-galleries, these films, echoing the practice of the Lumière Brothers, often consist of a single take with a length (approximately four minutes) determined by the running time of a single reel of film in the camera.

Co-published by argos editions and the Kunsthalle Bern on the occasion of Mark Lewis’ exhibitions in Brussels and Bern, this fully colour illustrated book documents the artist’s new films from Centrale (1999) to the previously unpublished Algonquin Park, Early March (2002), Tenement Yard, Heygate Estate (2002) and Children’s Games, Heygate Estate (2002).

Three authors approach Lewis’ work from a specific angle: Jean-Michel Bouhours places it in the history of cinema as “post-modern film-works, works postdating the end of cinema as the choice medium of mass entertainment”, Shepherd Steiner makes an entrance to the work of Mark Lewis via the “set” and Bernhard Fibicher describes the painterly aspects in the new films.

author: Mark Lewis, Jean-Michel Bouhours, Shepherd Steiner, Bernhard Fibicher
editor: Charlotte Pöchhacker
publisher: argos editions (Brussels), Kunsthalle Bern
year: 2002
book: 21,5 x 25 cm, 62 pages, English / French / German
ISBN: 9076855145
price: €20