For this solo exhibition, Bell has created over twenty new works that vary in medium and dimensions, from several tiny 4 x 3” mixed media collages to a large, detailed 30 x 40” ink and watercolour drawing. These works contain a fully formed visual world of abstracted characters, landscapes, and wordplay that imply narrative as quickly as they distract from it.

One of the works in the exhibition, Up With Art!!!/ Organized Cacophony (Systems), 2025, has a compartmentalized composition teeming with Bell’s tightly arranged blocks of colour and figures/shapes amidst text rife with free associations such as “Marc, I love these jpegs you sent me!” (attributed to a Mr. David Zwirner here), and “one can’t help but leave the planet like a worn ham”. To create this (and several other works in the show) Bell worked with many small scraps of paper and loose drawings from his collections and distilled them into compositions, adding to and negating from these fragments in a process he likes to call “The War With Paper”.

The aforementioned 30×40” ink and watercolour drawing in the exhibition, The New Schnauzers Dept circa 2012-2023-2025 (POST 1995), 2025, is one of the largest ink and watercolour drawings Bell has made to date. The title itself describes its history to a degree: it was thought to be “completed” in 2012, it was even exhibited, and then it was put into storage for many years. The drawing was unearthed and worked on again in 2023 and once again more recently for this exhibition. This basic process was used in all of the works that are presented here. They are combinations of fragments and materials that have existed in Bell’s possession (or storage compartments) for some time (from bits of paper intended for use in collages to incomplete drawings) before they resurface through sorting methods and are repurposed or recomposed into a final outcome that is quite different from their original form.

MEDIUM(S)

mixed media on paper

ARTIST BIO

Marc Bell (b. 1971, London, Canada) studied Fine Art at Bealart, London, Ontario, and Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick. He has exhibited at DePaul Museum (Chicago, IL), John Michael Kohler Arts Center (Sheboygan, WI), The Lawndale Art Center (Houston, TX), Adam Baumgold Gallery (New York, NY), and the Museum of American Illustration (New York, NY) in the USA; Watari Museum of Contemporary Art (Tokyo, JP), Sterput (Brussels, BE) and the V1 Gallery (Copenhagen, DK) internationally and Museum London (London, ON), Owens Art Gallery (Sackville, NB), Weird Things (Toronto, ON), MOCCA (Toronto, ON) and the Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver, BC) in Canada.

Bell is the author of Raw Sewage Science Fiction, Worn Tuff Elbow, Stroppy, Hot Potatoe [sic], Pure Pajamas, and Shrimpy And Paul And Friends. He has also been active in self-publishing and “the small press” for decades, producing countless other “limited edition” booklets. His comics have appeared in Kramers Ergot, The Ganzfeld, New York Times Magazine, The LA Weekly and many Canadian monthlies and weeklies. He has edited several books including Joe Hale’s Love And Forgiveness, Mark Connery’s Rudy, and the anthology Nog A Dod (Prehistoric Canadian Psychedoolia). He recently co-edited Alive Outside with Neoglyphic Media and was awarded 2nd place for the design of his latest book Raw Sewage Science Fiction in Comics / Graphic Novels / Bande dessinées in The Alcuin Society’s 42nd annual Awards for Excellence in Book Design in Canada. Bell is a co-founder of The All-Star Schnauzer Band (alongside Jason McLean) and is currently living and working in Vancouver, BC.