WHIRLYGIG!: Sikkema Malloy Jenkins

- SATURDAY 10 TO 6

MARK THOMAS GIBSON

WHIRLYGIG!

February 3 - March 11, 2023

Sikkema Jenkins & Co. is pleased to present WHIRLYGIG!, a

solo exhibition of recent work by Mark Thomas Gibson. The

drawings and paintings featured here were produced during

Gibson's 2021-22 Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University,

and shown in the exhibition HERE YE, HEAR YE!! at

Princeton's Lewis Center for the Arts. WHIRLYGIG! will be on

view February 3 through March 11, 2023.

Mark Thomas Gibson approaches the chaos and

contradictions of America's present as an ever-evolving

condition of its own past. Through painting and drawing, his

imagery engages the traditions of history painting and

caricature, emphasizing the intrinsic surrealities of American

culture and its tendency towards mythologizing itself. Gibson

employs the aesthetics of satirical cartoons in his work for the

immediacy of their subversive, concise messaging.

Simultaneously reflecting, critiquing, and mocking societal

power structures and cultural hegemonies, Gibson's work

presents a narrative vision of America that implicates both

creator and viewer as active participants within its story.

The works in WHIRLYGIG! directly address the tumultuous

social and political events that have come to define the first

quarter of the 21st century. This selection of works visualizes

the relentless flow of information inundating social networks,

news channels, and media outlets. A wide array of motifs and

characters evolve in Gibson's world, including steam pipes

that scream while you work, trip wires that catch you on your

way out, and a vibrant green path of musical phrases that

snakes through the crowd at a rally. All the while, white gloved

magic acts are prayed over by clasped hands with even

whiter knuckles. Down the way, captured Klan hoods wave in

the breeze past sticky situations that lose their hold of

entangled legs as they churn. It's a WHIRLYGIG!

Initially conceived of as an examination of the early Biden

presidency, this body of work soon evolved into a larger

interrogation of American ideologies and their underlying

subtexts. In Rally Jams (2022), this sense of timeless

pandemonium abounds. A bright green knot bearing excerpts

of quotable songs envelope a pair of disembodied, clasped

hands and striding feet, while the ghostly eyes of a Klan hood

peek from the corner. Another set of hands along the top of

the painting incites the horns of a bison with a brandished red

flag; the entire composition is illuminated by the glow of a toy

sword, set ablaze as a burning cross and lying on the ground

in front. Confronting these dystopic manifestations head-on,

WHIRLYGIG! offers a striking assessment of a shared time

and space within the mediated disorientation of our current

reality.

Mark Thomas Gibson (b. 1980, Miami, FL) received his BFA

from The Cooper Union in 2002 and his MFA from Yale

School of Art in 2013. In 2022, Gibson was awarded a

Guggenheim Fellowship; he was also a 2021-22 Hodder

Fellow at Princeton University and received a Pew Fellowship

from the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage in 2021. He was

awarded residencies at Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY, and

the Elizabeth Murray Artist Residency by Collarworks, Troy,

NY, in 2021; he was also a resident at the MacDowell Colony,

Peterborough, NH, in 2017. In 2016, Gibson co-curated the

traveling exhibition Black Pulp! with William Villalongo. He has

released two artist books, Early Retirement (2017), and Some

Monsters Loom Large (2016).