Supernature
April 18 - May 31 2025
Institute 193
215 N Limestone, Lexington, KY

Institute 193 website
Contemporary Art Library
Notes & Figures (from the Artist Talk)

Supernature is infused with chemical reactions — inside darkrooms, inside plastics, inside desire itself. Boundaries dissolve between body and substance, image and material, pleasure and toxicity. The work metabolizes, pulses, and unsettles – mood stabilizers (Aripiprazole), photo processes (RA-4), and the slow alchemy of self-transformation course through its surfaces. The exhibition title references Cerrone’s 1977 disco track — a winding anthem about pesticides. The song’s form and content are almost antithetical, fusing lyrics that warn of toxic chemicals with rhythms that exude euphoria. Vitality and poison slip between one another.

Materially rooted in the surplus of commodity culture, Supernature repurposes second-hand remnants sourced from Metro Atlanta: expired darkroom paper, found acrylic scraps, vintage magazines, discarded lightboxes. Once a tool of seduction in advertising, the fluorescent glow of the lightbox is recontextualized, no longer selling products or lifestyles but illuminating fragments of Markovic’s personal archive, as he takes stock of his own accumulations, materially and emotionally. The lightbox composites beam with melded plastics, faded stains, fingerprints, and stand-in bodies that bear the markings of desire with the passage of time.

In a series of lumen prints, pages torn from 1980s collector porn magazines are exposed in sunlight onto outdated darkroom paper (1980s–2010s), triggering unpredictable chemical reactions. Glossy bodies dissolve into streaks of light and residue, their nostalgic value destabilized. In this fragmented reconstruction of the gay image, Markovic reflects on his place within a lineage shaped by both intimacy and loss. The AIDS crisis ripples forward and backward in time, its aftershocks reverberating across generations. Figures fracture, radiate, and flicker between ecstasy and disintegration. History compresses as past and present converge onto a single surface.

What lingers, what mutates, what fades? Supernature exists between transformation and dissolution, tracing the residues of touch, time, and chemical entanglement.

-Mattie Pieschel

Installation images c/o Institute 193

Kiss, 2025
Lamba print, metal plumbing tape, stainless steel lightbox with fluorescent bulb
40 x 30 x 5 inches

Rush 01 - 03, 2024
Charcoal
11 x 8.5 inches each

Gay Photography 01, 2023-25
All “Gay Photography” works toned silver gelatin lumen prints
All 10 x 8 inches

Gay Photography 03

Gay Photography 07

Gay Photography 02

Fernando Redux, 2022-25
Lamba print, lighting gels, artist's tape, window paint, stainless steel lightbox with fluorescent bulbs
40 x 30 x 5 inches

Car Stereo, 2025
Lambda print, window paint, vinyl car decal, in a stainless steel lightbox with fluorescent bulbs
40 x 30 x 5 inches

Self Portrait at 19 and 24, 2025
C-print
10 x 8 inches

Gay Photography 15

Dumb Glass, 2025
Silver gelatin prints, fresnel lenses, duct tape, found acrylic, privacy window filters, lighting gel, hardware, stainless steel lightbox with fluorescent bulbs
43 x 34 x 8 inches

Pillowstrap, 2024
Lambda print, lighting gels, stainless steel lightbox with fluorescent bulbs
40 x 30 x 5 inches

Gay Photography 06

Gay Photography 14

Gay Photography 16

Gay Photography 09

Gay Photography 12

Gay Photography 04

Gay Photography 08

Gay Photography 11

Gay Photography 13

Gay Photography 10

Gay Photography 05