Ghost Lights features a new series of painted wood panels by Colorado-based artist Mark Bueno. The works explore ‘ghost lights,’ luminescent balls of light often seen floating in nature before quickly retreating. Sightings of these mysterious, orb-like natural phenomena have occurred all over the world and throughout time have been attributed to the supernatural. In folklore, these beams of energy are represented as spirits, ghosts, or angels, said to contain souls released from the body afterlife. Bueno has a long-standing interest in traditions of storytelling, especially related to superstitions. He is fascinated by the power of paranormal presence to continually elicit curiosity in other realms of existence and creates work that embodies and engages this curious energy.

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Using spray paint, masking tape, and stencil techniques on custom circle wood panels, Bueno creates layers of colors, lines, and radial symmetry in hypnotic, abstracted patterns that pull us inward. In some senses, Bueno’s works become symbols to document lives that once were; now set off into the unknown. While Bueno transfers his overall belief in the positive effects these unknown deposits of energy can have on us, there is something not completely resolved, almost a quiet superstition to their form—one that resembles a shield to protect oneself from any evil that may remain hidden in the darkness.

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Mark Bueno (b. 1975, Texas) received a Bachelor of Fine Arts and Art History at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Bueno is known for using plywood as his primary medium on which he creates painted imagery inspired by his family’s background in quilting and his interest in hand-made stencils and graffiti art. He lives in Denver, Colorado and exhibits his work nationally and internationally.

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Mark Bueno: Ghost Lights is an exhibition curated by Mardee Goff and presented at BMoCA at Macky. BMoCA at Macky is an exhibition series presented by the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art in collaboration with Macky Auditorium Concert Hall, University of Colorado Boulder.