For all their concision, Sheinkman's works inspire multiple allusions. Over the years, they have suggested microscopic photographs of minerals, bones, proteins, tendrils, corals, coiling strands of DNA, or, ascending like Charles and Ray Eames' Powers of Ten, everything from the darting trails of subatomic particles to maps of astronomical events. They are notable for their elusive scale; encountering them, a viewer might feel they've entered another realm, of physical forces beyond our human gauge. In this aspect, Sheinkman harks back to the idea of abstraction as reducing form to the basic building blocks of existence: not geometry, but something no less essential − the active alchemy of organic form, the dynamic calligraphy of creation.

The works' physical creation is more pedestrian - each day, Sheinkman rides his bicycle from the Upper West Side to his West Harlem studio in an old warehouse on the edge of the Hudson to engage his craft. His latest pieces, all oil on canvas, offer sumptuous color fields that recall the brooding intensity of Rothko. Within them, he unspools layers of coiling strokes which snake across the canvas like knotted life-ropes, or some vast ethereal electric cable. Empire is raw and loose, suggesting a meandering bloody path, or a dangerously snarled umbilical cord. In Troy, two extended nooses or lassoes hint at missed connections; in Apollo (though they may sound grand, the titles all derive from Brooklyn streets) a ghostly looping lariat seems to emerge from the mists to ensnare the viewer.
The implied reference to American (or French) iconography aside(hurrah for the red, white and blue!), the choice of colors carries elemental associations: churning oceanic blues, fiery Turneresque reds, the wispy whites and greys of clouds or smoke.

In all, Sheinkman's canvasses are forays into a disorienting abstract terra incognita, tethered firmly by the artist's hand. Despite their ominous themes, I often find a sense of celebration in his work, a joyful communion with the physical world, with all its secret structures and unseen energy. Through a humble lexicon of line, he has conjured an atmospheric arena in which vital forces are unleashed to flow fluidly together. Enticing the viewer with immersive immediacy, Sheinkman's painting packs a wallop. One can think of his work as channeling the bottled lightning of the gestural impulse − making a case for the continued relevance and potency of mark-making, rejoicing in the allusive-yet-elusive eloquence of lines in space.

Mark Sheinkman: The Allusive Eloquence of Lines in Space Exhibition Site
Mark Sheinkman Artist Site