Blackbird Rook presents

Specimens in Flux: Mark Fairnington and the Poetics of Imperfection

21st February - 28th March

Mark Fairnington’s paintings of natural history specimens, taxidermied animals, and livestock, occupy a space between scientific documentation and artistic interpretation. His work interrogates the ways we collect, preserve, and represent the natural world, exposing the tensions between preservation and decay, perfection and imperfection. In an age increasingly dominated by artificial intelligence, Fairnington’s focus on degraded and imperfect specimens provides a poignant counterpoint to the hyper-polished aesthetics and ideals of perfection that AI promises.

This exhibition invites viewers to reflect on the intersection of realism, decay, and the human impulse to preserve and categorize. It also questions how we navigate our faith in visual representations, particularly in an era where AI’s influence on realism blurs the line between the real and the imagined.

Fairnington’s fascination with specimens highlights the singularity required to represent a species. His paintings, such as those inspired by the Horniman Museum’s collections, transform these specimens into unique entities imbued with a melancholic individuality. These works examine the tension between the anonymity of the scientific specimen and the inherent personal history of the once-living being.

In works like The Ambassadors (2007), taxidermied animals posed on plinths seem caught between worlds—neither wholly alive nor entirely forgotten. Fairnington’s paintings breathe into these specimens an afterlife that both mourns and celebrates their passage from life to objecthood.

Slight imperfections in Fairnington’s representations—a broken leg, a faded wing, or the worn textures of taxidermied skin—become metaphors for the passage of time and the inevitability of decay. As Giovanni Aloi suggests, these marks transform the anonymous specimen into a narrative-rich subject. This theme resonates with contemporary concerns around the fragility of ecosystems and the ephemerality of life in the Anthropocene.

Against the polished, idealized visions of AI, Fairnington’s work offers a counterpoint: imperfection as authenticity, as humanity, as truth. His paintings remind us that it is in the marks of decay and the traces of wear that life’s deepest beauty often resides.

Realism, in Fairnington’s hands, becomes a double-edged tool—both a means of meticulous observation and a meditation on artifice. His works parallel the processes of AI, where raw data is refined into idealized outputs. Yet while AI aims for seamless perfection, Fairnington embraces the irregular, the incomplete, the raw.

This tension invites us to consider our trust in visual representation and our growing dependence on AI’s vision of the world. By turning to imperfection, Fairnington asks whether truth lies not in what is flawless, but in what is real.

Fairnington’s finely detailed brushwork recalls the history of still life painting, particularly the vanitas tradition of 16th and 17th-century Spanish painting. His works celebrate the technical mastery of painting while simultaneously critiquing its limitations.

By representing imperfect specimens, Fairnington aligns himself with a lineage of artists who have used realism to navigate the tension between life and death, permanence and impermanence. His paintings become acts of preservation, not of physical bodies but of the stories and histories they embody.

Fairnington’s paintings act as meditations on our relationship with the natural world and the ways we attempt to control and categorize it. In the context of AI, his work takes on a new resonance, challenging the notion that perfection and fidelity are the ultimate goals of representation. Instead, he celebrates the imperfect, the transient, and the flawed as sites of meaning and authenticity.

Specimens in Flux: Mark Fairnington and the Poetics of Imperfection invites audiences to reconsider the ways we perceive, value, and represent the natural world. It offers a space to reflect on the coexistence of decay and preservation, reality and imagination, and the analog imperfections of painting in an increasingly digital age. Through Fairnington’s luminous paintings, we are reminded that beauty often resides not in what is polished and complete, but in what is fragile, unfinished, and fleeting. These works ask us to slow down, to look closer, and to find wonder in life’s imperfections.