The Future Ain’t What It Used to Be *
by Matthew Deleget

The following text was published in the exhibition catalogue Mark Dagley: Shaped Canvas, Selections from 1987 on the occasion of the artist’s solo exhibition at MINUS SPACE, Brooklyn, NY, 2008.

Simply put, I’m a fan of Mark Dagley. More alchemist than artist, I first met him a couple of years ago through abstract painter Don Voisine. I can vividly remember Don pressing me at the time to visit Mark’s studio in Jersey City, New Jersey. “You’ve GOT to see these shaped canvases with checkered surfaces that Mark made in the late 80s -– he just pulled them out of storage…” 

The context surrounding these works is intriguing. In 1987, Mark took over William S. Burroughs’s Bunker space on the Bowery in NYC where he made a dozen or so new paintings that bridged the vast distance between Malevich and Tetris, paintings that looked like they came with a joystick. Mark exhibited these new works later that year in a solo show at Tony Shafrazi Gallery in Soho and subsequently put them into storage in his parent’s basement, in essence cellaring them for the next two decades until last year.

I’m personally delighted to have the opportunity to present a selection of Mark’s shaped paintings at our project space in Brooklyn. Although now more than twenty years have passed since Mark originally conceived and made the works, my wish is to re-present these works as new, in a new moment and a new context. The paintings are curiously prescient about today’s discourse around reductive art, in particular the significant impact of the digital age on abstraction. 

I’m really glad I made it to Mark’s studio. Thanks Don.

* A Yogi Berraism.