Mark Shunney
Unit Five: Water at the edge of change
Opening reception on July 4, at 5pm - @ Minnow Arts.
Exhibition on view July 4 - 27, 2025
UNIT FIVE artist statement
Through the lens of living in Unit 5 Locust Street, Mark Shunney experiments with time, space, common objects and performance to reflect on how water is at the edge of personal, geological, and geopolitical change. Water shapes land and our bodies - essential to planetary existence and integral to native peoples land stewardship and spirituality. It also drives conquest and capitalism, which both move like raging rivers through the landscape - impossible to stop and with devastating consequences.
The artist draws on his experience witnessing the San Lorenzo Valley community buy back its natural resource from the largest publicly traded water company (California American Water Co.) for 11 million dollars in May 2008. He weaves in themes from his research on the use of water to expose cavities of natural resources during the Gold Rush, without regard of the impact on native populations or the landscape. He draws from the Dead Sea Scrolls, ancient scripture hidden in caves of the West Bank, eroded by water and other elements. He reminds us to pause when we drink from the beautiful, precious water that flows through our community.
This exhibition reveals the harm humans have wrought on our planet and each other through greed and misuse of land and water, and intends to honor those who protect generational wisdom and our sacred nature.
About the artist
Mark Shunney (b. 1969) is a California-based conceptual artist who constructs work from four-letter words. Composition and palette are informed by his immediate environment, and themes rise during events of personal and global impact, like natural calamities, geopolitical crises, or the death of an influential artist. He produces statements that get realized in performance, installation, video, sound and painting.
Born in Warwick, Rhode Island, Shunney launched his career as artist and curator on the East Coast. He earned his BFA Sculpture from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and his MFA Sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design. In his early years, his sensibilities were shaped as assistant to the sculptor Ursula von Rydingsvard (1996-1999) and as art handler and registrar at the Andrea Rosen Gallery NYC (1999-2001). In 2001 he opened his first storefront gallery, Brooklyn Front, in DUMBO. Fleeing the impact of 9/11 in New York, he re-located to the West Coast in 2006 to focus on his personal work and family. From 2011-2018, he managed the Sesnon Gallery at Porter College, University of California, Santa Cruz. In 2012, he opened his second gallery, Art Research Office, operating in Santa Cruz through 2018.
In addition to actively producing, Shunney is currently the founding Public Art manager for Stanford University’s renown collection of 80+ historical and contemporary pieces, and advises on public and private collections. Examples of his own work are included in private collections in the United States and Europe, and can be viewed by appointment at his studio in Santa Cruz, California.