Hunted Projects is pleased to present The Treachery of Things, a solo exhibition by Livingston based, Scottish artist, Mark Purves (b.1982). 

Mark Purves’ latest series, The Treachery of Things, presents a compelling reexamination of the still life genre through a conceptual and material lens. In this new body of work, Purves blurs the line between image and object, illusion and presence. By embedding painted facsimiles of everyday food items into the very surface that represents them, he transforms the canvas into a hybrid form—simultaneously a depiction and a sculptural intervention. 

Each work begins as a photographic study, which is then meticulously translated into paint. But Purves goes further: he physically carves into the canvas and integrates the object—or its painted likeness—into the painted field. This act disrupts the conventional surface of the image, challenging the notion of the painting as a passive window onto another world. Instead, it becomes an active site of tension and transformation, where representation is both enacted and unsettled. The resulting works occupy a liminal space between two and three dimensions. They are not purely pictorial, nor are they entirely sculptural. This ambiguity becomes central to the viewer’s experience. Rather than offering a resolved or easily consumed image, the works demand a slower, more inquisitive mode of looking. Viewers are asked to question what they are seeing, and how they are being asked to see it. Purves’ practice critically engages with the historical conventions of still life, but rather than reinforcing symbolic or aesthetic traditions, he destabilizes them. The embedded objects form a kind of visual tautology—representing themselves, while also being materially present. This doubling collapses the space between signifier and signified, turning the painting into a self-reflexive system that implicates both artist and viewer in the act of perception. 

The interruption of illusion by physical presence reframes the still life as a space of inquiry rather than resolution. It draws attention to the constructed nature of visual representation and encourages reflection on the boundaries between the real and the rendered. Purves’ technique exposes the mechanisms of depiction, prompting us to consider not only the objects portrayed, but the cultural and perceptual frameworks that shape how we engage with images. The Treachery of Things positions Mark Purves as a distinctive and rigorous voice in contemporary painting. His work challenges the conventions of visual art, expanding the possibilities of the medium while inviting us to rethink our assumptions about image, object, and the act of looking itself.