TAPE RECORDINGS

March 8, 2008

When I came across this technique, I very soon discovered the power of resistance presented by it, I mean, not just as a difficult medium, but also almost as a difficult partner. It would glorify one theme and ruin another. I found a great pleasure in working with such a capricious material (every artist knows that the more the restrictions the better the outcome).

Well, as you know, my technique involves layering and intersecting; while doing it I was contemplating on the layering and intersecting of universal and personal meanings and memories. People react to my tapes because it talks to them on many levels starting from the very basic level of tactile feeling - almost everyone hold this tape in their hands and is familiar with the sensation of striking a line with it. Many may almost feel it and hear the sound of adhesive being pulled off the roll. And then I build on it. I add the images, which are as familiar as the material itself. I wouldn't call my tapes photography based; they are image based. They are about recognition: recognition of a tactile sensation, recognition of an image, recognition of a memory. They are very much play-it-again; it is the very essence of my work. When I work on the image, I try to keep it on that edge of almost falling apart, so that an eye of a viewer was given the challenge of assembling it in recognizable shape. And after the first moment of visual recognition the joy of memory recognition should come. At least that's how I want it to be.

On Medium by Curt Dilger

March 1, 2008

The activity of an artist, to make a new world, to fashion an independent vision, is an act of pride. Khaisman's choice of medium, utilitarian packing tape subverts and mocks this pride. The tension between the image and its source, the conceit of the artist, posed against the tape previously ignorant of its value as a "medium", is the primary meaning of this work over and above the selected subject.

From Interview to MOOSE Magazine

February 11, 2008

When you went to school you studied architecture in Moscow, how did this study and the architectural work you did after led to the art you are creating now?

My education left me with a profound love and respect for classical art. I feel I'm continuing in this tradition; I'm simply using a medium unintended for art.

Do you look at your art as part of a whole or do you see your art and architecture as very different things you are working on?

My art is art.

My tape paintings are part calculation, part accident. I only wish architecture, as it is practiced today, could include, and even invite, the serendipitous accident. My training as an architect gave me a slightly different perspective on art, to think about art in a broader way, tied to an historical context, and considered also as a construction, and a piece of consumption culture.

How did you come up with the idea to work with tape and can you explain the process of creating these works to us?

I began as a traditional stained glass artist, but soon realized I was most interested in the effect of painting with light. With tape, I found I could continue my conversation with light, but in a more expedient, sketch like manner. The results were unexpected, and I've continued with it.

What inspires you when choosing the themes or images for your art?

I'm inspired by visual sensations, which no doubt trigger cultural associations.

The medium itself has many suggestive formal properties, but it also carries many associations of a crudely wrought culture, or memory, or an image struggling to exist. The tape itself casts sadness over the image, as if it knows it has little chance to survive.

Some of your work has a strong film noir look and feel. Is this a subject you like or do the technique of the tape and the film noir images go together very well?

Film noir is an urban tale of western civilization. At the first look, it seems like a style driven project. But then there is a creeping sense of terror, as if the center of power has shifted away from us. The tape then carries a sense of confusion and uncertainty, as if a more final image is no longer possible.

Memory Sticks by Elena Drozdova

February 21, 2008

In the presence of Mark's tape, I bid a farewell to the passing memory of humanity. In the age of memory sticks, my own memory is undertaking a major transition. I plug it in and let the cloudy current of shared human existence swirl me in the uncertainty of today. Yet, memory sticks. The odd fragments of tape torn from a parcel from the past, it sticks to my hands, to my clothes, to my conscience. I look in a mirror and try to brush it off, but some left unnoticed messes up the look of my up-to-date attire. Mark notices. He patiently picks it up, the sticky remnants of the past, and reconstructs the images. Rendered in tape, the miscellaneous subjects level with one another: a teenage snapshot pairs with a goddess's head; a movie still, a group of chairs from the Louis XV epoch, a knight's armor replace one another significantly indistinguishable in the postal tape. The colors washed, emotional ties long forgotten. Like a quiet lunatic, Mark goes on collecting fragments of tape carelessly left behind after another opening of a parcel from the past, rendering images without order, like the one with echolalia who repeats the words without meaning just for the sake of sound. Sometimes I feel that Mark's images in adhesive tape stick better to my fleshed memory than their colorful, moving, or three-dimensional origins. In the age of memory sticks, when the past becomes an extinct, Mark's tapes are the fossils of cultural remnants.

From Roberta Fallon and Libby Rosof's Artblog
December 18, 2006

The biggest surprise in the show was by Mark Khaisman, a Moscow educated artist and architect. Khaisman's lightbox pictures are made of that cheesy, translucent brown packing tape, the layers built up to create degrees of opacity (image, "Conversation").
Photo-based, the subjects are cinematic pregnant moments. In terms of subject matter, my favorite was "Conversation," showing the talkers from the knees down. The other two images are in hallways, outside doors, giving a sense of being shut out. The images are part of a series, "Spaces of Suspense." The sepia tone is especially surprising given the film noir look of this work. Occasionally Khaisman throws in some wrinkles, but it's mostly pretty straightforward layering. The results are arresting.

From Roberta Fallon and Libby Rosof's Artblog
June 30, 2006

Khaisman seemed to burst on the Philadelphia art scene not much more than a year ago with his "paintings" of flimsy brown packing tape on light boxes. He was a highly celebrated conceptual architect in Europe through the 1980s, and there's a hint of non-English syntax in the titles of a couple of his paintings. This round, Khaisman has made the plaid grid more prominent, but the subject matter remains relationships. The simplified faces suggest we all are living scripted lives.
My favorite of the three exhibited was "Pulled yourself together a bit? ...That's better," in which a woman is shown cooking (I presumed she was cooking eggs or some other comforting, routine thing, with her spatula in hand) as she looks up. Here we are, boys and girls together, figuring out how to live together and take care of each other. It's not always just about sex--but like the other two artists, Khaisman is exploring gender roles and societal expectations.

From Philadelphia Weekly by Roberta Fallon

August 2, 2006
Mark Khaisman's back-lit pictures made of packing tape on Plexiglas evoke the world of film noir, where emotional trouble lies thick between people caught up in anger and accusation. Khaisman's works are as old and familiar as a sepia-toned photograph. Pulled Yourself Together a Bit? ... That's Better depicts an ambiguously gendered person in aggressive posture raising a knife in one hand.