Press Release

Mrs. is pleased to present Nonstop, MC Sparks’ New York debut solo exhibition. Based in Brooklyn, the artist explores the ever changing idea of what it means to be trans and masculine through the lens of their southern upbringing. Each work in this series of paintings, created over the past year, has become an outward manifestation of Sparks’ personal, and often unseen, experiences through hormone replacement therapy.

Sparks’ new body of work attempts to measure change. Repetitive mark making is repeated in painted patterns of polka dots and cheetah spots. The prints either obscure or frame each subject, proving to be inescapable. The imperfect forms scatter across the canvases, each minimally different from the next; the rough rounded bounds of the shapes achieve a radiating quality. But with titles like Injection Sites and Scar Tissue, it becomes clear that the visual motif of the dot, for example, carries a corporeal connection and deeper weight. The repetition in the visual pattern is mirrored in Sparks’ weekly routine, when each shot of testosterone makes contact with their skin - an accumulation of dots continues to build. The marks are an abstracted measurement of a week; a bodily index of time. 

In both Weight I and Weight II there is an allusion to a larger goal through the continuous manipulation of the body; achieving strength through repeated action. Reps, sets; parts make up a whole, but the whole is not stagnant and continues to change. In both their identities as a trans person and as a painter Sparks is working towards ‘something’, each a process with an unclear trajectory. 

Sparks’ approach to painting is most evident in their self-portraiture and figurative forms. In Injection Site, the artist has worked and reworked the canvas, painting, scraping, and repainting their portrait. The result is a dreamlike figure, painted from the haziness of memory and pointing to a past version of the composition. Sparks holds a mirror up to themself in Jock Painter, a more studied self-portrait depicting themself as a painter in repose. Resting between strokes, the artist is both in process and depicted in a state of process. Another figure emerges seemingly out of nowhere and built out of washes of pinks and blues, looking on as an observer of change.

Nonstop documents the ways in which mark-making can become a method of both concealment and revelation - ways of building an ever-changing body that resists fixed definition. The resulting tension between recognition and disappearance mirrors the experience of inhabiting a body that has been both hyper-visible and unseen.

MC Sparks (b. 1995) earned a BFA in Painting from the University of Georgia in 2019. Their work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions at Institute 193, Lexington, KY; Nine and Colnaghi, New York, NY; Hi-Lo Press, Atlanta, GA; Elbow Room, ATHICA, Lyndon House Arts Center, and Lamar Dodd School of Art, Athens, GA. This is their first New York solo exhibition.

MC Sparks’ Nonstop will be on view at Mrs., 60-19 56th Road, Maspeth, Queens, NY 11378 through January 10, 2026. For press inquiries or more information, please contact: hello@mrsgallery.com.