The artists find common cause in slowing down the ‘Chelsea shuffle.’
Even though their work is drastically different and there are three decades between them, Mark Flood and Samuel Jablon share a common thread in their art: the written word. In their work, words have the power to provoke, amuse, and entertain. Pieces by Flood and Jablon were recently juxtaposed against one another last year in the exhibition Dirty Words at Mindy Solomon Gallery in Miami. Jablon, who studied poetry in addition to painting, used gestural brushstrokes, imbuing his canvases with bursts of bright colors and phrases like “Sun Sun Sun”—an homage to the Miami heat, “Pleasure,” and “kcuf,” an anagram for “fuck.” Flood’s contribution to the exhibition included documents from the art scene in his hometown of Houston, like a large copy of a typed letter from the Museum of Fine Arts Houston recruiting members and an enlarged reproduction of an award check. Flood currently has a show at Karma in New York titled Protest Signs from 1992, while Jablon has an exhibition at Nancy Littlejohn Fine Art in Houston, until February 22. Jablon and Flood met to discuss their practices, the use of words in art, and censorship.