Mark Gleason-Nine Horses

About

La Luz de Jesus Gallery is pleased to present Nine Horses, a solo exhibition featuring artwork from Mark Gleason from April 8-May 6, 2023.

Is there any creature more evocative of free will than a wild horse? The common English phrase “to buck the system" refers to the unbreakable spirit of a bucking bronco who refuses to bend to the commands of others. As impressive as they are volatile, the ‘unbroken horse’ is seared into the American psyche as a visual metaphor of resistance.

In this show, artist Mark Gleason has created nine complex oil paintings to express poetic dissent for the current suffocating political climate. The artist explains, "this body of work came together quite instinctively for me in a time of geopolitical struggle. Concerned, I wished to create a series of horses in attitudes of opposition. I wanted something dynamic and visually akin to Robert Longo’s “Men in the Cities” series, with powerful equines as an allegory of resistance. I sought to embody an otherwise inexpressible rage and wrath, using rodeo imagery, however, stripped of the confining, constraining, and hindering rider and tack”.

The impressive physicality of Gleason’s subjects adds to the feeling of power and injects kinetic fierceness into imagery generally reserved for the classical art of the American West genre. Using the same rich color palette as used in historic paintings of the west, the artist depicts modern unbridled emotionality that the viewer can feel pulsating from the canvas. Gleason states that, “these paintings allowed me to create an unburdened shout of defiance, a refusal that felt like fighting back". With this show, we invite you to experience the bold beauty of noncompliance and the power that comes from fighting for your own beliefs.

Contact Gallery Director Matthew Gardocki for purchase info or to be placed on the preview list: info@laluzdejesus.com  (323)666-7667