School of Art, Media, and Technology

Alum Mark John Smith to Open Solo Show at BQSQD

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MAN MANY MEN

Bureau of General Services—Queer Division at The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center

January 25th – March 18th 2018

Opening Reception 6-9 PM

208 West 13th Street, Room 210 NY, NY 10011


In a series of new interactive and immersive works, Smith questions the conflicting lexicon of the everyday in relation to spaces of intimacy. His work explores the manner in which prejudice and bias are enacted through the self – via both high and low relief implementations of façade.
Man Many Men is comprised of elements imported from the entertainment industries, inviting visitors to employ all senses in an experiential tapestry that fuses language, gesture and identity. This is a body of work that hurts, sleeps, cries, fucks, exhales, sucks, breathes, sees.

In support of Man Many Men, Mark presents Blue Blue Balls an intimate and jarring publication featuring images and text lifted from within the artist’s personal devices. The book features an accompanying essay by Matt Whitman – artist filmmaker and faculty at Parsons School of Design.

“We become complicit in a kind of ‘Freudian slip’. Smith slowly points us outside of the safe assumptions built within language and toward something a bit more sinister. The mistake, in its innocence and earnestness is, in fact, a reminder of our role as viewer and violence of assumption.”

Copies of the book will be made available at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division bookshop for the duration of the artist’s show.


Find more details about the show here and more about Smith here.

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