The Kiss - 2007
Two-channel video/sculpture
15 minute loop, silent
Two 13" CRT televisions & custom made plinth: 55" x 22" x 14"
Edition of 3 & 1 AP (3/4 private collections)

"Multi-media artist Kelly Mark has long been interested in the obsession of television in our culture and in technology’s gradual replacement of human interaction. Her light box entitled The Kiss was derived from an installation included in her Glow Video Series that Mark produced using reflected light as a primary material. The installation consisted of two television screens positioned as if “kissing” and emanating a glowing, flesh-toned light between them. “The light source for this work was created by simply recording the cast light from a hard core porn movie…the resulting glow is steady and rhythmic with quickening pulses of colour, mainly pinks, oranges and red hues.”
Viewers of Mark’s The Kiss are reminded of Constantin Brancusi’s sculpture by the same name, which was simplified over many incarnations until it became a highly distilled abstraction of his initial representation. Mark’s version takes the theme much further into the realm of the conceptual, as The Kiss becomes wholly symbolic of the intervening nature of technology in our daily lives. - Rosemary Heather: "Kelly Mark Always Working" Canadian Art, Winter 2007 (excerpt)

Exhibition History:
2007 Justina M Barnicke Gallery, Hart House (Toronto ON); 2007 Power Plant -Auction (Toronto ON); 2008 Cambridge Galleries (Cambridge ON); 2008 Platform Gallery (Seattle WA); 2008 Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery (Halifax NS); 2008 Lawrence Eng Gallery (Vancouver BC); 2008 Vox Gallery (Montreal); 2008 Wynick-Tuck Gallery (Toronto ON); 2008 Aqua Miami Art Fair w/ Platform Gallery (Miami, FL); 2009 California Museum of Photography (Riverside CA); 2009 Bass Museum (Miami FL); 2010 The Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto ON); 2011 Art Gallery of Windsor (Windsor ON); 2018 The Darling Foundry (Montreal PQ); 2019 Casino Luxembourg: Forum of Contemporary Art (Luxembourg, EU);