… post tenebras lux & the flowers that burst concrete
Curator & Writer | Hakan Burcuoğlu · Venue | Gastown, Vancouver · Gear | Leica
Aflower bursts from concrete, yet we seldom question how. It’s the token “against all odds” story, perhaps a soul-rending hymn that delivers us to glory. We like our truisms with treacle, we just yearn for that spark. But we’re wary of its wonders; so we beckon heroes to fight in the dark. There goes one, swinging fistfuls of love. He runs through alleys, he soars like a dove. I’ll just watch from here, I’ve got no bull in this fight. The flowers doth bloom, but we stand in their light. We fain over flowers, we bring them to the fore. But Mark jackhammers concrete, behind him, a lifetime of lore.
Darkness begets the light, and Mark’s anything but monochrome. A bit picaresque, he’s beyond the pale—primed for the streets, parsing social justice into palpability. Bid adieu to doublespeak, and to cryptic killjoys who dare doth speak. He’s tethered to love, and tied by blood, marching alongside an army of capacious hearts entrenched deep in the mud. Turn on your radio, their oeuvre’s gone platinum. Things are changing. And that is fact. Collectively, they’re conjuring a life force to bring those flowers back.
In contemplating this interview, I mused to myself—Is there anything Mark hasn’t been asked before? Turns out there is, and here below it lies. In what feels like a journey to the moon, this constitutes our heftiest publication to date. Mark’s brought a suitcase full of dreams, and given us the key. So open it now. Set that flower free.
Welcome to The Curatorialist, Mark Brand.