Mark Flood

Mark Flood (b. 1957, Texas) is an American artist based in Houston, Texas. Since the early 1980’s, Flood has been making and exhibiting paintings, collages, sculptures, videos, and music. Flood is known for his prankster antics, creating art that mocks American culture and the contemporary art world.  

His current practice’s most recognisable work is that of ongoing series’ of paintings. Since 2000 he has produced a body of “lace paintings” – wilfully beautiful canvases luridly coloured and richly patterned with impressions of decorative lace. His text paintings on monochrome canvases or found panels overspray lettering in missives urging the exploration of sexuality, the committing of suicide, or deadpan self-description. Most recently, a new series of paintings lift corporate logos from websites in low resolution and blow them up on canvas into a degraded image of massive pixels.

His work has been featured in numerous national and international exhibitions, including shows at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston; Luxembourg & Dayan, London and New York; Peres Projects, Berlin; Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles; Galerie Perrotin, Paris; Utah Museum of Contemporary Art; and Marlborough Gallery, New York. Flood received the Engelhard Award in 1991 and is represented in the permanent collections of the Dallas Museum of Art; the Menil Collection, Houston; the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. His work is widely exhibited throughout the United States and abroad.