'Startling and intriguing...' Rachel Pugh, Manchester Evening News

2005: Winner Best Contemporary Design - Formica 2005 Design A Laminate Competition. Launch of 'Imperfect Symmetry' Collection.
Baroque Stone, a photographic collage of architectural details, won the Contemporary category in the Formica 2005 Design A Laminate Competition.		Portal, a surrealist vision of shell and glass, was runner-up in the Avant-garde category.		Cyan Sparks was highly commended
Baroque Stone features in the April '05 edition of Blueprint and idFX will be profiling my work in June. As a result of my success I have been invited to show for a second time at Designersblock in Milan during the Furniture Fair from 13th-18th April. I am presenting the Formica designs alongside my new collection of fabrics and wallpaper, Imperfect Symmetry. The collection will be based around my customary distortion of nature and the never perfect reflections that can be found there.
Mirrorscape Photography Exhibition: I studied Three dimensional Design at Manchester Met and whilst there became increasingly interested in the power of mirrors to abstract landscape and natural objects such as shells when placed on them in the open air. I exhibited the resultant images in a series of shows called mirrorscape in London, Milan and Manchester.
Pellucid Screen Project/Designersblock Exhibition: Following the success of the exhibitions I went on to produce furniture in the form of the 'Pellucid' Screen made from polycarbonate and light-sensitive acetate. And I gradually developed an interest in digitally produced surface pattern. I found that I could produce powerful imagery that could be applied to fabrics, wallpapers, acrylic and laminates.
Background: Graduated from Manchester Metropolitan University in 2001 after studying Three Dimensional Design. Recent exhibitions of my work include Designersblock, Milan, The Air Gallery, Mayfair and Urbis, Manchester. Studied ceramics at the Blaker Design School in Norway and worked with public artist Thomas Heatherwick at his studios in north London. Made an animated short film, 'Diamond Eye' that was shown at the Kino Film Festival in Manchester.

Exhibitions

2004
Symmetry, a short film montage of new imagery, at The Green Room Theatre, Manchester
Surface pattern design at the Art Surgery, Manchester
The Beginning, a short film montage of new imagery set to Arab chanting, at the Green Room Theatre.

2003
Giant light projection of new imagery onto glass at Urbis, Manchester
New imagery at group show, Comme Ca, Timber Wharf Gallery, Manchester
Screen and pictures at Lowe Interiors, Exmouth Market, London EC1

2002
Tangible Art Show, Portland Place, London W1
Designersblock at the Salone del Mobile, Milan
Air Gallery group show, Dover Street, Mayfair, London W1
Folly Gallery group show, Lancaster
Shortlisted for design of water feature at major new development by Berkeley Homes at Chelsea Bridge Wharf, Battersea, London S.W.

2001
Designersblock, London
New Designers, London
'mirrorscape' photography at Richard Goodall Gallery, Manchester

2000
Solo show at Jigsaw Kitchen, Manchester
Solo show at Newton Street Studios, Manchester
Castlefield Gallery group show, Manchester

The most startling aspect of Mark Finzel's intriguing mirrorscapes is that many of them were taken only yards apart.   The power of first the mirror then the camera to capture a fragment of the landscape and to reflect it back, apparently out of context, is something that has been hitting visitors to the Jigsaw Kitchen at The Triangle, where they have gone on display until December 15.   So the apparently Middle Eastern image of an exploding ball of sand was in fact captured only yards away from the moody seascape, that could be Norway, but is in fact Wales.
   It was not something Mark had imagined when he started playing with cameras and mirrors a year ago.   He had been experimenting with different reflective materials like brass and aluminium, but he says, "the mirrors were so intriguing that I rejected the other materials and then when I made the mirrors into 3D columns, they became even more extraordinary!"   Having made a number of mirror columns, he has transported them to various wild locations that include Morfyr Nefyn near Carmarthen and Dorset, taking particular joy in the evening skies and sunset that take on a magical quality when chopped up as part of a mirror.
   He is cagey about exactly how big the columns are, because he believes that part of the appeal is the viewer's speculation about the scale.   His first exhibition of 'mirrorscape' took place at the end of August in the Newton Street Gallery, where he sold thirteen out of fourteen works.  
  This is an artist who will surely be snapped up by the London art scene. Thank goodness he loves Manchester.

Mirror Image by Tim Birch
City Life Magazine, Manchester
8 Nov 2000

Lurch across from Selfridges and sashay into the Triangle, and you've entered a different world. Or at least that's how it seems. The revamped Corn Exchange is one version of super-sleek design: acute angles, sanitised surfaces, and reflective materials .Zig-zag into Jigsaw and saunter up the rug, and you will find photography by Mark Finzel.
   Befittingly, Finzel's work is very clean. It rests in a kind of antechamber before the heaven or hell of shopping begins. Take a closer look and you realise that Finzel has captured abstractions of landscape via his placement of mirrors. It makes for neat illusions. Suddenly, and strangely, what appears in the frame is both in and out of place. Desert manifests in mid-air; light skips off a section of water unlike elsewhere in a stream; a neat block of sky has an unusually dark hue; a sunset seems too bright thanks to the reflective properties of a mirror. Variables along similar lines extend around the walls of Jigsaw's Kitchen. Perceptively, Finzel merges a hint of the exotic with the ethereal by shifting subject and meaning simultaneously.