{"id":29239,"date":"2023-02-27T14:34:47","date_gmt":"2023-02-27T05:34:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kiaf.org\/?post_type=insights&p=29239"},"modified":"2023-02-27T14:34:47","modified_gmt":"2023-02-27T05:34:47","slug":"battlefields","status":"publish","type":"insights","link":"https:\/\/kiaf.org\/en\/insights\/29239","title":{"rendered":"Battlefields"},"content":{"rendered":"

2023.2.14 – 3. 3
\nMark Flood<\/p>\n

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Battlefields Installation View, Courtesy Peres Projects, Photo Credits t-space studio<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Peres Projects is pleased to present Battlefields <\/em>by Mark Flood (b. 1957 in Houston, US), the artist\u2019s first exhibition with the gallery in Milan.<\/p>\n

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Mark Flood, Authority with Fuzzy Flag<\/em>, 2018, Painting – Acrylic, archival ink on canvas, 182 x 182 cm, Courtesy Peres Projects<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The pervasive symbology of American consumer culture is the foundation of Mark Flood\u2019s work. His compositions are large and confrontational, commandeering and distorting corporate and national iconography in order to reevaluate their impact, logic and authority.<\/p>\n

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Mark Flood, Cannon Fodder<\/em>, 2022, Painting – Acrylic on canvas, 183 x 183 cm, Courtesy Peres Projects<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Flood critiques contemporary culture by appropriating its visual language, for instance rendering an American flag blurred to question the viability of the American dream, or using text slogans on canvases that mimic and distort conventional advertising. Yet, rather than producing artwork to stake a political position or to directly persuade his audience toward certain convictions, Flood\u2019s work co-opts mass media in order to expose the absurdities of modern society.<\/p>\n

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Mark Flood, Listen<\/em>, 2017, Painting – Acrylic on printed canvas, 122 x 135 cm, Courtesy Peres Projects<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Since the beginning of his exhibition career in the 1980s, Flood has explored monstrous silhouettes of the human body as a vehicle for signification. With Battlefields<\/em>, Flood returns to the motif of clustered hands explored in earlier paintings, which he repeats in variable silhouetted forms across several canvases. There are two distinct configurations: one, depicted in Authority with Fuzzy Flag <\/em>(2018) for instance, portrays a dense wall of raised arms in a suggestively fascist salute, while the other is rounded and disorderly, like limbs caught in a tumbleweed of debris. Cannon Fodder <\/em>(2022) among others is representative of these more unruly constructions. They depict arms uplifted in ambivalent gestures to evoke something between defiance, resistance, and vulnerable flailing. To Flood, hand gestures are both ubiquitous and open to association, conveyors of abstract meaning rather than explicit messages.<\/p>\n

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Mark Flood, Prisoner Exchange<\/em>, 2022, Painting – Acrylic on canvas, 183 x 183 cm, Courtesy Peres Projects<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In Listen <\/em>(2017), Flood intervenes in an existing snapshot of a CNN news anchor, who is framed as though seated for a portrait. The image is reminiscent of bust portraits of authority figures, a common trope throughout Western art history. In Flood\u2019s interpretation, the figure\u2019s face is obscured by rough brushstrokes in gradients of gray, as though she wears a face shield, and her beady eyes peer out through small holes. The word \u201cListen\u201d hovers next to her head, a subliminal subtext alluding to the propagandistic construct of contemporary cable news.<\/p>\n

Although Flood adopts many visual symbols in his works, he presents them ambiguously so as to confront the use of images as tools for manipulation and control.<\/p>\n

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Mark Flood, Friendly Greeting with Paranoid Fantasy<\/em>, 2018, Painting – Acrylic on canvas, 168 x 152 cm, Courtesy Peres Projects<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This is Mark Flood\u2019s eighth solo exhibition with Peres Projects and his first in our Milan gallery. Flood\u2019s numerous solo exhibitions include GOOGLE MURDER-SUICIDE<\/em>, Maccarone Gallery, New York, Gratest Hits<\/em>, Contemporary Arts Museum of Houston, Texas, American Buffet Upgrade<\/em>, Stuart Shave Modern Art, London, Mark Flood<\/em>, Rubell Family Collection, Miami, and Another Painting<\/em>, Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis. He has been part of many group exhibitions including Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles, the Museum of Modern Art, Gunma, Gagosian, Beverly Hills, the Museum of the Moving Image, New York, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Salt Lake City. His work has entered the collections of the Dallas Museum of Art, Texas, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston among others.<\/p>\n

Peres Projects
\nPiazza Belgioioso 2, 20121 Milan, Italy
\n+49 30 275 950770<\/p>\n

WEB\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/a>INSTAGRAM<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","categories":[50,51],"class_list":["post-29239","insights","type-insights","status-publish","hentry","category-insight","category-stories"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.0","language":"en","enabled_languages":["ko","en"],"languages":{"ko":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false}}},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kiaf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/insights\/29239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kiaf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/insights"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kiaf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/insights"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kiaf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kiaf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}