Mark Flood is a contemporary American artist. Flood’s work strives to critique society at large, specifically the art market and its institutions. He is described as an “agent provocateur and enfant terrible - a painter and a prankster," Flood is "known for his fierce intelligence, wry wit, and undeniable talent.” He began his career making posters in the 80's for his punk rock band Culturcide. Flood takes on a prankster persona that critiques one and all: low-brow and high culture. The artist's work is both a powerful lens on America and a sophisticated, anarchic continuation of high art’s love affair with the readymade.
Among his best-known works is his Lace Paintings series, consisting of technically inventive and delicate compositions. For these works, Flood lays down several overlapping layers of lace and toxic colors of paint onto canvas, creating the illusion of intricately detailed paint rather than collage. Flood attributes this shift in style in part to critic Dave Hickey’s 1993 book The Invisible Dragon: Four Essays on Beauty. “Hickey made me realize that I made ugly art,” says Flood. “But that’s what I thought art was about—if you made something beautiful, you were suspect. … When I discovered how to make something beautiful, I no longer needed any art bureaucracy.”
Flood was born in 1957 in Houston, TX, where he attended Rice University. He has exhibited nationally and interenationally in Spain, France, Italy, Germany, and Greece. Luxembourg & Dayan Gallery, New York, showed a survey of Flood's work from the 80's in 2012. He is currently represented by Zach Feuer gallery in New York, and his work can be found in the collections of the Modern Art Museum of Forth Worth, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Menil Collection, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and the Birmingham Museum of Art among others. Flood continues to live and work in Houston, TX.