"Mark played hookie from movie scoring in Los Angeles long enough to visit the Capobianco Gallery in San Francisco on opening night. The elbow-to-elbow crowd included Winston Smith (Collage genius behind the classic Dead Kennedy's LP art), KRK Ryden (Devolved artist brother of Mark Ryden), Vale of RE/Search, and a gaggle of hardcore devotees eager to see Mark's mutants.

- photo by Michael Pilmer

Near the end of the night, Mark performed live mixes of his own gallery music, and churned out approximately 30 minutes of fairly abrasive, repetitive noise via intuitive sound deconstruction."

- Michael Pilmer

:: full report here ::

Images pulled from man's past... then corrected into sickeningly beautiful beings. Photo manipulations and illustrations - Archival Prints, Photos, and Originals. Symmetry. Would the hues and richness of individual colors be the same to you if you saw them through my eyeballs and optical nerves? Would things smell the same through your nose or another nose?

People are all hiding something. Many of us know exactly what that is, while most probably have no idea.

Rorshach’s patterns though abstract, suggest different visual images to each person who views them, and each individual interpretation is correct. Objects in this world are what they are to you .because of how you see them.

The photographs in this show were corrected in order to view another look at a those that have walked the planet before us.

Theoretically symmetrical in generalities, the subtle potato-like qualities of the human form
allow the tenants of these bodies to hide within their asymmetric muddiness. Lori Capobianco

These "corrected" photographic images allow the "true tenant" of these human faces and figures to be ‘flushed-out’ and viewed without the disguise that we all so expertly hide behind.

Especially how our asymmetrical exterior hides the true contents of each of us. Aztec Indians built gigantic Kaleidoscopic pyramids that focused light from the sun through complex polished silver mirrors that reflected and flipped images of humans onto walls, giving rise to the celebration of a quest for true symmetry in their lives. In the 1800’s people would flirt with these ideas and play parlor games with signatures, paper cuttings, etc. It was in the early 1900’s that Rorshack and other psychiatrists developed theories and medical practices (inverted, as it turned out) based on their intuitive hunches regarding symmepretenders to bi-lateral symmetry, try and the internal workings of man. Humans, great are in actuality, closer to potatos in their lack of precise symmetry. A closer look reveals what is truly inside the people around us. Lori Capobianco

These old photographs were "corrected" using a combination of both antiquarian hand-crafting and modern computer technology to render these images. Many have been housed in civil war era (approx. 1864 AD) gutta percha or small leather cases or frames. Others have been photographically enlarged to reveal details that might be over-looked at a smaller size.

These images were my personal favorites from over 3000 different tests created between 1999 and 2004 from original image sources that included personal photography, old photo booth strips, and daguerreotypes and ambrotypes obtained from a wide variety of sources including research facilities, antique shops located around the world, online auction sites.

Lori Co-Mark Mothersbaugh Dec. 2003