Professor Mark Engel Exhibits Shifting Terrain at Triton Museum of Art

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

SANTA CLARA, CA -- The Triton Museum of Art will host Shifting Terrain, a solo exhibition of paintings by Mark Engel, Professor of Studio Art at Mission College, through January 4, 2026. The show celebrates Engel’s achievements as both a practicing artist and an educator, highlighting Mission College’s commitment to nurturing creativity and connecting students with the wider arts community.

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Shifting Terrain invites viewers into a world where the human figure is in constant flux, intertwined with landscapes, abstract gestures, and fragmented forms. Engel’s work explores the unstable boundaries between self and environment, interior and exterior experience.

Figures appear to emerge and dissolve simultaneously, sometimes pressing toward the surface of the canvas, creating an intimate tension that draws the viewer in. The compositions balance vivid color, fluid brushwork, and layered textures, resulting in paintings that feel alive, unpredictable, and emotionally resonant. Across the gallery, the interplay of form and dissolution encourages reflection on identity, perception, and transformation in a constantly shifting world.

“Engel’s paintings refuse closure,” said Zheng Zhang, adjunct faculty of art history at Mission College. “Fragmentation is celebrated, shapes resist fixity, and the work becomes a space for continual questioning. The figures invite the audience into a dialogue about who we are and how we change - how we exist in flux.”

Engel has exhibited widely, including solo and group shows at Know Future Gallery, Vargas Gallery, Baton Rouge Gallery Center for Contemporary Art, Limner Gallery in New York, and 33 Contemporary Gallery in Chicago. His work has been featured in Create! Magazine, Artsin Square, and Curatory Magazine. At Mission College, he continues to enrich students’ understanding of studio practice through teaching, residencies, and faculty exhibitions, serving as a model of professional artistry and intellectual engagement.

“I start with the figure and then open it up,” he said. “Each painting is built through cycles of addition and subtraction, allowing the work to grow beyond my conscious intentions. I aim to balance form with dissolution, to capture the fluid nature of becoming and to soften the boundaries between self and other.” 

This approach produces a visual language that is simultaneously immediate and layered, offering moments of surprise and discovery with each viewing, Engel said.

The exhibition is presented at the Triton Museum of Art, a cornerstone of Santa Clara’s cultural life for more than 60 years. The museum exhibits local, regional, and national artists and maintains a collection emphasizing the Greater Bay Area’s diverse creative voices. Located across from the Santa Clara Civic Center, the Triton draws over 40,000 visitors annually and engages tens of thousands more through its education programs and satellite exhibitions.

“Engel’s work reminds us that art is not just about representation, but about experience and transformation,” Zhang concludes. “Shifting Terrain offers viewers a rare opportunity to witness the fragile, ever-changing contours of perception and identity in action.”

 

Engel will host an artist talk at the museum on Saturday, October 18, from 1 to 2 p.m. 

Benjamin Demers
Director of Marketing and Public Relations
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