Almine Rech gallery, Mark Hagen

Nude Group Therapy
January 10 — February 17, 2018 • Brussels
Almine Rech Gallery is pleased to present Nude Group Therapy, an exhibition of new paintings and sculpture by Los Angeles-based artist Mark Hagen. This is the artist’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery, and his second at our Brussels space.

In his work, Mark Hagen foregrounds the interplay of materials, process, and form in his geometric, minimalistic paintings, sculptures and installations. Hagen finds inspiration in the breakdown of history, vision, and hierarchies and creates works by pushing common and utilitarian materials in directions which reveal the process of making.

Nude Group Therapy takes its title from an entry in The Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential, initiated in 1972 by the Union of International Associations, an NGO research institute based in Brussels, Belgium, which artfully, ambitiously and systematically attempts to catalog the woes of humanity as well as the means of alleviating them. Ever since 2016 Hagen has titled his paintings after entries from the volume devoted to “Human Potential, Transformation and Values” such as “Nude Group Therapy”.

Recent exhibitions include ‘Flatland / Abstractions Narratives #2’, MUDAM, Luxembourg (2017); ‘L.A. Exuberance: New Gifts by Artists’, LACMA, Los Angeles (2016). Hagen’s work is in distinguished public collections including LACMA, Los Angeles, and The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Mark Hagen was born in 1972 in Black Swamp, Virginia. He lives and works in Los Angeles, California.