Mark Handforth is recognized for his large-scale sculptures that suggest freeze frames in a state of jaunty tension. In these works Handforth twists mundane markers of modern life into an evocative series of symbols and ciphers. Working in the fertile conceptual space between Minimalism and Surrealism, Handforth manipulates form, material, context, and especially size. Thus transformed, his chosen cultural signifiers take on a new and alien life. With his expansive repertoire including variations on recurring motifs such as coat hangers, traffic signs, lamp posts, and even such simple elements as stars and rope, Handforth rescales, recolors, and literally twists what might otherwise be so unquestionably familiar as to be ignored. These symbols of domesticity, reappropriated and stripped of utility, exist as a series of oblique totems that read playful, provocative, and even menacing by turns. Born in Hong Kong, Mark Handforth now lives and works in Miami, Florida. He has participated in exhibitions at such institutions as the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; the Palais de Tokyo, Paris; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and Villa Croce, Genova, Italy. His work can be found in the permanent collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, the Dallas Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among others.