Solstice Arts Centre is delighted to announce TRACING ECHOES, a major exhibition by acclaimed Irish artist Mark Francis. Known for his dynamic and visually arresting paintings, Francis creates works charged with movement, sound, and rhythm. His practice combines intense sequences of colour within tightly gridded structures, generating a compelling tension between order and chaos.

There is an agitation in Francis’s work - a pulse, a vibration - as if the forms and colours are trying to break free, bleed into one another, or shift beyond their boundaries. His longstanding engagement with science provides fertile ground for exploration, transforming the invisible and the imagined into striking visual language. While technological feats inform his imagery, Francis reminds us that the true marvel lies in the unknown, where questions often prove more intriguing than answers.

For TRACING ECHOES, Francis presents new paintings, charcoal drawings, and a significant new commission for Solstice: Listening Field, the artist’s first moving image work. This immersive piece expands his visual vocabulary into time-based media, offering audiences a fresh perspective on his ongoing investigations into rhythm, perception, and the unseen.

This new work will also feature as part of Francis’s representation of the Republic of San Marino at the 61st Venice Biennale in 2026, marking an exciting moment in his international career.

Mark Francis’s work has been exhibited at MoMA PS1, Brooklyn Museum; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, New York; Kunstmuseum St. Gallen; Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; Tate, London and Liverpool; Whitechapel Gallery, ​​Design Museum, and the Royal Academy in London; The Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin; Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki; Kunstmuseum Stuttgart and Hamburger Bahnhof Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin.