Leo Marz
Modern Office
July 19—September 9, 2023
436 Jackson Street, San Francisco, CA
San Francisco, CA: Gallery Wendi Norris is pleased to present Leo Marz’s Modern Office. For his debut at Gallery Wendi Norris and first U.S. solo show in over a decade, Mexican artist Leo Marz investigates humans as processors of information. The seven new paintings and two sculptures in this exhibition, which evoke modern offices, address the flux, fragmentation, and discontinuities of space and time inherent in contemporary life.
Each painting begins with a series of quick observational sketches. Drawing upon his imagination, intuition, and sense of humor, the artist combines elements from multiple sources as he develops the work. Modern Office addresses both temporal and spatial complexities. Lines may offer perspectival cues or suggest overlapping objects or gestures. Playing with scale, Marz layers compositions within compositions, bending space and time. Hats, decorative objects, and fragments of human bodies are ghostly presences in complex office spaces. Planes intersect in irrational ways. Abstraction coexists with representation. Interiors mingle with exteriors, present with past. Marz speaks to what we are conscious of, yet may not fully comprehend, as we navigate work life and home life, often simultaneously.
ABOUT LEO MARZ
Leo Marz holds an MFA in New Media from the Transart Institute for Creative Research and Donau University in Krems, Austria. His most recent solo exhibition was The Ancient Incident at Mexico City’s Museo Jumex in 2022. His work has also appeared in the Yucatán Biennale, Palazzo delle Arti Napoli, Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College (Annandale-on-Hudson, New York), Steve Turner Contemporary (Los Angeles), Museo de Arte Moderno (Mexico City), Museo Universitario de Ciencia y Arte (Mexico City), Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil (Mexico City), Casa del Lago UNAM (Mexico City), and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey (Monterrey).
Marz serves as the Director of the University of Monterrey Center for the Arts. From 2015 to 2017, Marz curated the 12th FEMSA Biennale, a traveling platform for contemporary Mexican art. Fluent in many mediums—including video, music, performance, installation, and new media—Marz is currently focused on drawing, painting, and sculpture, as seen in Modern Office. Leo Marz is represented by Pequod Co. in Mexico City.