Mark De Muro understands innuendo. His coconut sculptures express an acute, almost exalted sense of ambiguity and double meaning. What De Muro calls a “predilection for diptychs,” his coconut series explore twosomes, bilateral imagery, dual fields of common elements, and the twinning of concepts.

Using the metaphor as a means of distilling the inner recesses of human experience, De Muro juxtaposes familiar imagery in unexpected combinations, such as Apophenia Pareidolia Twins Coconut. In this work, De Muro explores the human tendency to perceive meaningful connections between unrelated things and the perception of a face within an incongruous, inanimate object. The irony and visual wit here is De Muro fabricated a sculpture of two female torsos (identical twins, which are related!) sharing a connecting braid like sharing an umbilical cord. This teasing of the visual perception with optical illusions, irony, and innuendo clearly eschews retinal experience for a more visceral encounter by the viewer. 

In his thought-provoking work, They Say Her Eyes Follow You Around The Room, De Muro takes cue from French painter and sculptor Marcel Duchamp favoring three- dimensionality, perspective, space, and illusion. The perception of nineteenth-century bicycle high-wheels double as eyes. As a double entendre, De Muro sets up recognizable elements with an equally recognizable meme attributed as “the Mona Lisa Effect” whereby viewing direction is not affected by visual information though the human eye still interprets the visual information as if it were real. The spokes of the two wheels are interpreted as the radial fibers of the human iris, the hubs of the wheels are interpreted as pupils, the rims of the tires interpreted as rims of the iris, all conveniently located in the cockles of two coconut shells to set up a phenomenal double entendre.

Rubins Profiles Coconut stem from 19th Century silhouette cut-out portraits and Edgar Rubins’ illusionistic vases to explore perceptual and visual experiences with issues of ancestry and reverence for one’s progenitors. Whereas Rubins situated his silhouettes in ambiguity, De Muro incases the portraits in a cavernous seed to infer relativity, gestation, and regeneration. The swath of gold enfolding the symmetrical portraits visually holds the two seeds together. Red tulle borders the portraits imparting a unifying soft pink glow radiating from the hollowed shells.

In his Birds in Space/Cat’s Eyes Coconut De Muro took inspiration from Lucio Fontana's modernist slash paintings and Brancusi's Bird In Space sculpture. He fashioned two bird-like forms and placed them near the edge of the coconuts. Resting there the sculpted forms take on the contours of “pupils” or eye slits of a cat. In placing the “pupils” at the edge of the coconut, the remaining space mimics the anatomical retina of the eye. Reducing the forms to black and white against a gold background creates contrast and lends the work a surprising twist: how often do we see things in only black and white? The contoured forms of the "pupils" reference both the seeing and the seen, both the gaze and the object of desire—that cats have eyes for birds!

De Muro’s objects lay bare the notion of using a seed as a vessel and a point of entry for investigation into the gestational process. Having received the coconuts from Hawaii, the artist embarks on a complex process from conception to development to genesis. There is an intense physicality in the incubation period as the artist cuts, sands, scrapes, gessoes, and creates studies. Before the final execution of the pieces, De Muro takes a series of photographs to explore compositions and concepts. Images are often culled from newspapers, vintage objects, or direct observation, which are then edited and cropped. The presentation of the sculptures on wood panels accentuates multiple picture planes and are sized to lend immediacy for the viewer as if standing before a window of present reality. To further enhance the double entendre or commentary on popular culture, the titles to his work often allude to cliches, phrases from art history, or nods to modern artists.

To be sure, De Muro’s work has no value without the viewer. As Duchamp once quipped, “All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualification and thus adds [their] contribution to the creative act." As such, De Muro’s work resonates with both modern and contemporary art conception, expression, and viewing.

Mark De Muro (b. 1952, American) is a multi-media artist, art dealer, curator, lecturer, and consultant specializing in Impressionist, Modern, Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, Pop and contemporary Art. He was a founder and director of the Beaux Arts Foundation and the Downtown Arts Club. His work investigates personal meditations, familiar landscapes, or commentary on popular culture. Images culled from newspapers, vintage objects, or direct observation are edited, cropped, reimagined concepts, and harvested to lend immediacy as a window of present reality, or serve as metaphor for customs, traditions, portraiture, and the human condition.

De Muro received his BFA in art and art history from University of Miami. His work has been exhibited at Gallery 287, NY; Air Mattress Gallery, NY; Elga Wimmer Gallery, NY; Downtown Arts Club, NY; Chowaiki & Co Gallery, NY; Rockelmann and Partner, Berlin, Germany; Jackie Klempay Gallery, NY; Art Miami; Armory Pier Show, NY; Bjorn Ressle Gallery, NY; Leila Taghinia-Milani Heller Gallery, NY; Barbara Braathen River Gallery, NY; Gracie Mansion Gallery, NY; Chicago International Contemporary Art Fair Bubble Lounge, Chicago, IL; Germans Van Eck Gallery, NY; Vanderwoude-Tannanbaum Gallery, NY; P.B. Van Voorst Gallery, The Hague, Netherlands; MoMing Gallery, Chicago, IL; and, most recently at Envoy Enterprises, NY, and Michele Mack Gallery, NY. His work has been featured in Figaro, Japan; New York’s Hottest Young Artists, NY; L’Art Vivant, Paris; Bomb Art Quarterly, NY; New York Arts Journal, NY; The New York Times online; The Arsenic Lobster Poetry Journal; HG TV; The Washington Times; New York Art Beat; and “Resolve40” on YouTube. Collections include, U.S. State Department; Harvard University; Hess Corporation; Systems Products International; Meier Inc, Komar Inc.; Gracie Mansion; Jane Holzer; Tim Forbes; Jerry Magnin; Carol Hayes; Stanley Moss; David Murdoch; Victoria Baden-Powell; Ezra Chowaiki; Ed Meisner; Bjorn Ressle; Daniel Boulakia; Jonathan Bourke; Erin McKinnon; Jeanine Moss, and many others.