Did Chris Mars live through (or die from?) the Black Plague in a former life? His paintings of ghoulish, skeletal crowds and beseeching wraiths, set in gloomy environments that hark back to medieval villages, seem too vivid to have come purely from the imagination. Cruel and creepy, yet with a visceral beauty, Mars’ storytelling on canvas is almost classical in its precision, and feels strangely at home amid the memento mori and Biblical topics featured in works from the institute’s collection. As witness to his older brother’s sufferings from schizophrenia and the attempts at treating it, Mars allows the monsters who populated his brother’s mind to roam freely in his paintings. Walk out of this show on a fall day, and the dying leaves may seem to rattle a little more ominously. 612-870-3131; www.artsmia.org
Leave a Reply