Patrick Turk explores traditional histories and ancient mythologies viewed through a psychedelic lens. By combining historical illustrations with concepts from science fiction such as time travel, sentient planets, and hypothetical biology, he creates kaleidoscopic depictions of religious, mythological, and mystical allegories.
The exhibition will feature an immersive site-specific installation as well as hand-cut paper assemblages which are often materially sourced from science-fiction novels, encyclopedias, history, and scientific diagrams. Says Turk, “The intense levels of detail become a microcosm, forming a reflection of the human relationship to the plasticity of time and space, and to the process of self-unfolding.”
Patrick was born in Galveston, Texas, and lives and works in Houston. His assemblages have been exhibited at Art Storm, Cris Worley Fine Arts, Lawndale Art Center and Rudolph/Projects/Art Scan as well as galleries in Galveston, Texas and Los Angeles, California. In 2013, he was an Artist in Residence at the Lawndale Art Center. His works have been published several times in Mung Being Magazine and he has completed high profile commissions for the 2009 Houston Art Car Parade Poster as well as the Philokalia album cover by Golden Cities.
Patrick Turk is one of 60 artists included in the book, The Art of Found Objects: Interviews with Texas Artists (Texas A&M Press), authored by Robert Craig Bunch and released in 2016. He was also featured in the concurrent exhibition, The Art of Found Objects, held at Lone Star College-Kingwood in November 2016.
This exhibition is generously funded, in part, by Rob Clark & Jerry Thacker, Architectural Alliance, Daniels Construction, the Edaren Foundation, the Texas Commission on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts, the City of Beaumont, the Wesley W. Washburn, M.D. and Lulu L. Smith, M.D. Endowment Fund and the C. Homer and Edith Fuller Chambers Charitable Foundation.