Representation Lecture | Mark West: Seeing Things, Pareidolia and the Discovery of Form

Thursday, November 12, 2026, 6:30 - 8:30pm

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Image: Wet Angels (21”x21”), colored pencil on paper-printed photomontage. Courtesy of Mark West.

Image: Wet Angels (21”x21”), colored pencil on paper-printed photomontage. Courtesy of Mark West.

This event will be conducted in-person in 315F and through Zoom. 

For in-person attendance, please register in advance here. 
For Zoom attendance, please register in advance here.

This presentation will describe a practice that adopts methods of Finding rather than methods of Control. These include techniques of "hallucinatory" drawing utilizing the very human capacity for pareidolia, structural form-finding utilizing yielding and flexible materials, and somehow parallel sculptural findings as well. These are examples of how a longstanding fixation on Control may be softened and dissolved by surprisingly simple methods. 

The presentation will be followed by a Q & A.

Since 1981, Mark West's practice in drawing and painting has preceded and accompanied his technical inventions in fabric-formed concrete architecture. A former professor of architecture, he now lives and works in Montréal Canada at his Atelier Surviving Logic [www.survivinglogic.ca], and since 2023 as co-founder of Ceci n'est pas un musée [www.notamuseum.ca], a miniature cultural institution in Montréal. 

This event is free and open to the public. Registration is required.

Located at 7 East 7th Street, between Third and Fourth Avenues

  • Founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1859, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art offers education in art, architecture and engineering, as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences.

  • “My feelings, my desires, my hopes, embrace humanity throughout the world,” Peter Cooper proclaimed in a speech in 1853. He looked forward to a time when, “knowledge shall cover the earth as waters cover the great deep.”

  • From its beginnings, Cooper Union was a unique institution, dedicated to founder Peter Cooper's proposition that education is the key not only to personal prosperity but to civic virtue and harmony.

  • Peter Cooper wanted his graduates to acquire the technical mastery and entrepreneurial skills, enrich their intellects and spark their creativity, and develop a sense of social justice that would translate into action.