Leky, Mark

Lecky was born in Birkenhead , Merseyside County, near Liverpool . In a 2008 interview with The Guardian, he described how he grew up in a working-class family and in his youth joined the casuals ^[8] . Both parents of Leki worked for Littlewoods, a Liverpool company selling clothes and bookmaking . He attended school in Ellesmere Port , Cheshire ^[9] . At the age of 15, Leki dropped out of school, having received a certificate in only one subject - art. From the age of 19 he obsessively studied ancient civilizations. Lecky called himself self-taught . After talking with his stepfather, he passed high-level exams and entered the Academy of Arts in Newcastle , where he studied without much pleasure from 1987 to 1990 ^[10] .

At the end of 1995, Lecky moved to New York. The first time he returned to London in 1997, he worked at the online design agency Online Magic ^[9] . In 1999, at the time of the creation of the Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore video, Lecky lived in a tiny apartment on Windmill Street in ^[8] At the same time, he created donAteller with Ed Laliq. Their first performance was at 414 Club in Brixton . Later, Enrico David and Bonnie Camplin joined the group ^[11] . In 2005, Lecky enrolled as professor at Städelshul in Frankfurt am Main , Germany, and until 2009 taught cinematography ^{[12] [13]} .

About the present, Lecky lives in northern London with his wife Lizzie Carey-Thomas, curator of contemporary art at the Serpentine Gallery, and daughter ^[9] .

Career

The themes of Mark Lecky's work in the field of video art are characterized by the critic Dale MacFarland from Frieze magazine as "the tasteless, but strangely romantically elegant aspects of British culture" ^[14] . In an interview with The Guardian, the artist said that he liked the idea of ​​allowing “culture to use you as an instrument”, but added that as soon as the author begins to think of something as art, how the work will act, the art process stops ^[8] . Matthew Higgs described the work of Lecky as “having a strange, not like art quality, located on the edge of a knife, where art and life meet” ^[15] . As the one who had the greatest influence on creativity, Lecky called California critic Eric Davis. He attributed himself to the representatives of pop art ^[11] .

In 1990, Mark Lecky, along with Damien Hirst, participated in the New Contemporaries exhibition at the London Institute of Contemporary Art. In the future, he did not participate in public events and returned only in 1999 with the work of Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore ^[15] . In 2004, Lecky participated in Manifesto 5 ^[16] . In 2006, he was invited to the Tate Gallery Triennial ^[17] . In 2013, Lecky toured the UK as part of the curatorial project The Universal Addressability of Dumb Things , commissioned by the Hayward Gallery ^[11] . In the fall of 2014, a retrospective exhibition of Leke's works took place at the WIELS Brussels Contemporary Art Center ^[9] . Called Lending Enchantment to Vulgar Materials , it remains Leky's largest exhibition for 2019. The name of the exhibition is borrowed from a letter by Guillaume Apollinaire , in which the poet claimed that he and film director Georges Méliès “add charm to vulgar matters” ^{[10] [13]} .

Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore (1999)

In 1999, Gavin Brown, Martin McGone and Mark Lekki were in private viewing in one of the galleries in London. During a conversation with Emma Dexter, the then curator of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Lecky said that the most exciting form of art is music video. Intrigued, Dexter invited the artist to create a similar work. Leki made a 15-minute film called Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore. ^[9] The premiere of the video took place at the Institute of Contemporary Art ^[18] .

The work is a selection of other people's materials dedicated to the underground music and dance scene of Great Britain in the 1970-1990s. The film begins with the disco scene of the 1970s, mentions the northern soul of the late 1970s and early 1980s and ends with a rave of the 1990s. Superimposed sound tracks accompany the video sequence, creating a sense of unity and continuity of narration. In some places, conversation has been added. An animation is inserted in the middle of the video: the bird's tattoo seems to come to life, tearing off the dancer's hand and flying into the next frame on the arm of a visitor to a nightclub. Some dance moves are repeated in a cycle for several seconds, others in slow motion.

Much of the material comes from Tony Palmer’s 1977 film The Wigan Casino , shot for Granada Television . Leky repeats the experience of other artists of appropriative video art, and critics found work similar to the literary technique of slicing William Burroughs ^[19] , which consists in the fact that the text is divided into sentences and words, mixed and transformed into a new text.

Considering the first few videos of Lecky, among which, in addition to Fiorucci ... , We Are (Untitled) (2000) and Parade (2003), art critic Katherine Wood writes that they “represent a human subject striving to move into a reduced dimension. He dances, takes drugs and dresses up, trying to transcend the stubborn physics of the body and disappear in an abstract identification with ecstasy from music or the integrity of the image ” ^[20] .

The name, according to Lecca, is intended to show that "something as banal, catchy and utilitarian as a brand of jeans can be appropriated by a group of people and turned into something totemic, powerful and life-affirming." Leki admitted that he cried during the creation of the video ^[9] .

Sound System (2002)

Sound System (2002) is one of Leki's “immersive” works, which create a sound and visual impact on the audience.

Made in 'Eaven (2004)

The video takes place in the London studio of Leki. The camera revolves around the "Rabbit" by Jeff Koons (1986), which is located in the center of an empty room ^[11] . The video was recorded on a 16-mm film and “put on a pedestal like a sculpture” ^[21] . A room is clearly reflected on the mirror surface of the sculpture, but there is no reflection of the camera, and after a while the viewer realizes that the studio never had “Rabbit” - it was a computer image of Koons’s work.

Leki is a fan of Koons, explaining his fascination with the fact that the rabbit is almost perfect inaccessibility to man, which appeared as soon as Koons imagined him. I am always too involved in the work. " ^[8]

Drunken Bakers (2006)

The video uses the magazine's Drunken Bakers comic strip , invented by Barney Farmer and illustrated by Lee Healey ^{[22] [23]} . Leki shot comics, added close-ups and jump-katas to create a feeling of frame-by-frame animation . All replicas from the image are removed and replaced by sound dialogs, literally reproduced by the comic by the artist himself and Stephen Claydon, a member of JackTooJack. Sound effects of burping , vomiting , sipping are added , and a dimming transition is used between episodes.

The video is projected onto a white wall in a completely white room, a clock is projected outside the room, counting the time from three to four, and then repeating the cycle. There is no color in the comic book and video, so there are only two colors in the room: black and white. Like some of the previous works, the video shows “a hedonistic waste of time as a means of (temporary) getting rid of the limitations of capitalism and adult responsibility” ^[24] . Roberta Smith noted: “Mr. Lecci creates an oppressive feeling of irresistible attraction of the drinker to oblivion, revealing the painful realities that often give rise to comedy.” Leki did not receive official permission to use the comic from Viz magazine, "which, in the rare case of corporate insight, granted permission retroactively."

Felix Gets Broadcast (2007)

One of the early figures of the cat Felix was used in the work. Similar figures were used in experimental broadcasts of early television ^[25] .

Industrial Light and Magic (2008)

Industrial Light and Magic won the 2008 Turner Prize . It uses the Cinema-in-the-Round video lecture, in which “the artist offers a selection of his performances about cinema, television and video on the subject-image relationship ^[26] .

GreenScreenRefrigeratorAction (2010)

The performance began by inhaling the gas used as refrigerant in a Samsung refrigerator. With the help of digital modulation, Lecca voices the internal monologue of the black Samsung refrigerator, which is trying to realize itself and the world around it. The work, according to Leki, is a kind of fantasy: he can bring himself into a “state outside of himself, like a refrigerator, less human, perceived as an image” ^[8] .

BigBoxStatueAction (2003—2011)

In BigBoxStatueAction, one of Lecky's sound systems engages in a conversation with iconic British modernist sculptures such as Jacob and the Angel Jacob Epstein and works by Henry Moore . To get an answer from the sculpture, Lecky performs a “ serenade ” created from sampled music and archival materials.

The Universal Addressability of Dumb Things / UniAddDumThs (2013—2015)

Lecky oversaw The Universal Addressability of Dumb Things at Nottingham Contemporary. The name refers to a hypothetical concept from the field of computer technology, according to which "a network of objects that communicate with each other as reasonable agents is possible." In three expositions held in three different galleries, objects and works of art from a wide historical period were presented.

In 2015, Lekey demonstrated UniAddDumThs , a replica of the original exhibition, at the Kunsthalle Basel . The versions of objects exhibited during the original exhibition were fully reproduced using 3D printing and cardboard.

Dream English Kid, 1964 - 1999 AD (2015)

Collage film dedicated to the transitional age . Leki used the “found memories” of his life from the early 1960s to the late 1990s, which gradually increased anxiety and numbness. Harry Thorne from Frieze magazine wrote that elements of the film, such as recurring references to solar and lunar eclipses (which Lecky astrologically related to himself since he was born under the sign of cancer controlled by the Moon) ^[27] , and the countdowns “reflect a desire to comprehend a larger universe than characteristic of a particular era, as well as for the artist himself. ”

Leki's works are kept in permanent collections of the following museums:

• Tate Gallery , London ^[6] ;
• Center Georges Pompidou , Paris ^[7] .

• Mark Lecky YouTube Channel
• Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore (14:46) (1999) on UbuWeb
• Cinema Tour (42:00) (2007) on UbuWeb