Alex Markwith
Visual artist - Abstract painting & sculpture
Alex Markwith (b. 1988, Kingston, PA) is an American visual artist based in Helsinki.
Markwith combines painting, drawing and sculpture, in varying proportions, with each piece being a hybrid of the three. Juxtaposing different textures, positive and negative space, different shades of black, neon and metallic colors, Markwith’s work is almost always abstract, though it is grounded in reality via recognizable found materials such as fabric and construction supplies.
Created in the early months of 2021, his series Overcurrents features paintings on canvas populated by a mix of intentional and incidental process marks, blurring the lines between found, deliberate and provisional aesthetics. Markwith mines the imagery of the urban environment while drawing from a diverse range of art-historical sources such as abstract expressionism, surrealism and arte povera. The mood oscillates between extroversion and introversion, reflecting on the artist’s personal experience living in the urban environment during the pandemic.
Similarly, the sculptural works presented in previous exhibitions such as Elemental Transmissions at Laterna Magica, contrast different characteristics of materials to achieve a play of opposites orchestrated within each work. Many of these pieces resemble totemic structures, relating to the human body through their scale.
Markwith earned his BFA from Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 2011, after which he lived and worked in New York City for over nine years. He has exhibited in many cities including New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Helsinki and Paris. His works are included in numerous private collections as well as the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
