Mark Prent was born in Lodz, Poland, and arrived in Canada in 1948. He studied visual arts at Sir George Williams University in Montréal. He teaches moulding techniques to art students at Concordia University. His body of work combines realism and strangeness. His work has been exhibited in Europe, Canada, and the United States. Among his major solo exhibitions are those at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal in 1979, at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1978, and at the Kunsthalle in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1976.
Artwork description
Presented in Parc René-Lévesque, near Lake St. Louis, the artwork presents a three-masted sailing ship attached to the top of a tall metal tripod. In the centre of the unfurled sails are faces of fictional explorers. A connection might be made between the elevation of the ship above the ground and the ambitions of European explorers who discovered the New World. The ship’s prow points north, but although it represents a weathervane, the object is fixed and sustained by an imaginary wind. The artwork may be interpreted as a questioning of human nature, ambitions, and the will to explore the world.