Artists

Mark Soltero is an artist living and working in Ōtautahi, Christchurch.

Mark’s work is situated in reference to his personal history and the cultural and political landscape of the Postmodernist period. His practice is built around an intense drawing process. Working with hand-drawn and found images, processed in the computer and scaled, transferred and intricately hand traced and stencilled before paint is applied with squeegees or large brushes. While individual marks may be visible on close viewing, the image is read as a single mark.

In essence my paintings are history paintings that examine relationships between image, memory and materiality. Many of the images border on dissolution, fragmenting or breaking down in contrast to the seemingly smooth images that saturate our lived experience. Rather than making works in which the image might be shocking, I make works that draw audiences in, yet are challenging to look at. To a certain extent, the work explores our experience of différance, in time.

Mark holds an MFA –Dunedin School of Art, a BachDes–Ara Institute of Canterbury and DipTchg, Art & Art History–NZGSE. Mark was awarded the inaugural Head of School Award for Excellence in Post-Graduate Drawing from the Dunedin School of Art in 2014. He has been a finalist in the National Contemporary Art Awards three times, twice a finalist in the Adam Portraiture Award. Mark exhibits regularly including in Christchurch, Wellington and Hamilton.