MARCUS CAIN BORROWED LIGHT
MARCUS CAIN BORROWED LIGHT February 7 - March 21, 2020
SHERRY LEEDY CONTEMPORARY ART 2004 Baltimore Ave. Kansas City, MO 64108 816.221.2626 sherryleedy.com Catalog design Allison King Photo credit E.G. Schempf Cover image Rock Garden
Artist Statement “Borrowed light (noun): reflected light, specifically: light entering an interior and otherwise dark room or passage from an adjoining space having windows or skylight.” - Merriam-Webster Dictionary “Borrowed light is shared light. It may be represented by the literal illumination of a painting’s surface from the physical space occupied by the viewer, or an illusion of such light conveyed from within the picture plane. As a subject, borrowed light is a life-giving force, though at some distance. Its indirect nature still has reach through its reflected dispersion of waves and particles, and I use this phrase as a metaphor for the meaning to be found in abstraction. Among the constellation of themes that exist in my work, light is a subject to which I often return. Its reference has been as a metaphor for cognitive awareness, inspiration, spirituality, its role in sensory perception, and the existential significance of its absence. I am interested in its dualities: natural and unnatural; coolness and warmth; harshness and softness; its ability to illuminate and blind; and to be both generative and destructive. Light is but one subject, however, in a body of work in which each painting may have its own theme in combination with others that include: conditions of sensory experience and perception; the memetic potential of painting and craft as subjects; conflation of the figure, architecture, still-life, and landscape; visualizing the unseen; personal family mythology; and the transmutable nature of identity. These subjects are in service to an obsessive process of investigating relationships between layers, intersections, discoveries, and erasures. Layers become paintings upon paintings that both conceal and reveal through a repetition of small gestures. This patient labor provides time for thoughts about color, texture, pattern, and material, while the surface becomes a granular and durational meditation on an infinite mesh of interconnectivity.” - Marcus Cain, 2020 Cain lives and works in Kansas City. He is a graduate of the Kansas City Art Institute. Cain is the recipient of the Charlotte Street Foundation Visual Arts Fellowship and a KC Arts Council Inspiration Grant, among others. His work is in the collection of the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS; the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Sedalia, MO; Sioux City Art Center, Sioux City, IA; American Century Investments, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, H&R Block Headquarters, Kansas City, MO and others.
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Center Path, 2020 Acrylic on canvas 48” x 36”
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Scented Candle, 2020 Acrylic on canvas 12” x 9”
Palimpsest, 2019 Acrylic on canvas 12” x 9”
Wanderer, 2019 Acrylic on canvas 12” x 9”
Accretion, 2019 Acrylic on canvas 12” x 9”
Blue Falls, 2020 Acrylic on canvas 60” x 84”
Heavy Light, 2019 Acrylic on canvas 16” x 12”
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Color Tee, 2019 Acrylic on canvas 16” x 12”
Here With You, 2019 Acrylic on canvas 84” x 60”
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Standard Deviation, 2019 Acrylic on canvas 24” x 18”
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Winter Garden, 2019 Acrylic on canvas 24” x 18”
Order of Appearance, 2020 Acrylic on canvas 36” x 48”
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Twining, 2019 Acrylic on canvas 16” x 12”
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Borrowed Light, 2020 Acrylic on canvas 36” x 48”
Phosphene I, 2019 Acrylic on canvas 12” x 9”
Phosphene II, 2019 Acrylic on canvas 12”x 9”
Arc, 2019 Acrylic on canvas 18” x 14”
Array, 2019 Acrylic on canvas 18” x 14”
New Understanding, 2019 Acrylic on canvas 84” x 60”
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Pair II, 2019 Acrylic on denim 28” x 11”
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Path III, 2019 Acrylic on canvas 12” x 9”
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Path I, 2019 Acrylic on canvas 12” x 9”
Path II, 2019 Acrylic on canvas 12” x 9”
Pair III, 2019 Acrylic on denim 25” x 11”
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Transom, 2020 Acrylic on canvas 20” x 60”
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Chimera, 2019 Acrylic on canvas 16” x 12”
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Solarize, 2019 Acrylic on canvas 16” x 12”
MARCUS CAIN CV 2020 Education
B.F.A. Painting & Printmaking, Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, MO.
Solo/Three-person Exhibitions Borrowed Light, Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art, 2020. Marcus Cain, Eric Sall, Raissa Venables, Joseph Nease Gallery, Duluth, MN, 2018. Alignments, Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO, 2018. Wonder & Dread, Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO, 2012. Soft Bones, Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO, 2009. In Tandem: Anne Pearce & Marcus Cain, Kansas City Jewish Museum of Contemporary Art Epsten Gallery, Overland Park, KS, 2007. Tales of Caution, Greenlease Gallery, The Center for Arts and Letters at Rockhurst University, Kansas City, MO, 2005. Middle Ground, Dolphin Gallery, Kansas City, MO, 2000. Group Exhibitions/Art Fairs Superfine Art Fair, New York, NY, 2020. Kansas City Flatfile, H&R Block Artspace, Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, MO, 2020. Jedel Family Foundation Visiting Artist Exhibition, FADS Gallery, JCCC, Overland Park, KS, 2019. Sioux City Art Center Selects 2019, Sioux City Art Center, 2019. NYC Summer Invitational, George Billis Gallery, New York, NY, 2019. Kansas City Collection 2018-19, Kansas City Collectors Fund, Kansas City, MO, 2018-19. Kansas City Flatfile, H&R Block Artspace, Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, MO, 2018. Sweep: Survey of Contemporary Painting, Joseph Nease Gallery, Duluth, MN, 2018 Pattern Languages, A Charlotte Street Foundation 20th Anniversary Exhibition, Greenlease Gallery, The Center for Arts and Letters at Rockhurst University, Kansas City, MO, 2017. New York City Invitational, George Billis Gallery, New York, NY, 2016. Focus Gallery, Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS, 2016. Intimate Riot, Kansas City Downtown Public Library, Kansas City, MO, 2015. Public Collections American Century Investments, Kansas City, MO. Barkley, Kansas City, MO. BBC Worldwide America, Los Angeles, CA. Blue Cross & Blue Shield, Kansas City, MO. CBIZ Corporation, Johnson County, KS. Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Sedalia, MO. Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, Kansas City, MO. H&R Block Headquarters, Kansas City, MO. MLP Holdings LLC, Kansas City, MO. Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, JCCC, Overland Park, KS. Sheraton Hotel, Crown Center Development, Kansas City, MO. Sioux City Art Center, Sioux City, MO. Sprint Corporation, Overland Park, KS. Stowers Institute for Medical Research, Kansas City, MO. Todd Oldham, Designer, New York, NY. 34.
Awards Charlotte Street Foundation Visual Artist Award Fellowship, Kansas City, MO. Inspiration Grant, Arts KC Fund, Arts Council of Metropolitan, Kansas City, MO. Creative Capital Professional Development Grant, Kansas City, MO / New York, NY. ARTWall Public Art Commission, Art in the Loop Foundation, Kansas City, MO. Visiting Curator and Critic Program, Studio Visit with James Elaine, Curator of Hammer Museum at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA. Hosted by Kansas City Art Institute. Full Tuition Scholarship, Chautauqua Institute of Visual and Performing Arts Residency Program, Chautauqua, NY. Select Bibliography Portrait of the Artist, Marcus Cain, Optical Immersions, Noelani Kirschner, The American Scholar, November 4, 2019, online. www.theamericanscholar.org. Marcus Cain: The Kansas City Collection, Jessica Ayala, exhibition catalog, 2018. Cary Esser: Second Surface & Marcus Cain: Alignments, Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art, Elis abeth Kirsch, KC Studio Magazine, March 14, 2018, online. The Work of Marcus Cain and Cary Esser is Eyesight for the Blind, Blair Schulman, Informality, March 3, 2018, online.
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SHERRY LEEDY CONTEMPORARY ART 2004 Baltimore Ave. Kansas City, MO 64108 816.221.2626 sherryleedy.com
