MARK MULRONEY
Another Smile

December 5, 2015 to January 10, 2016

Ampersand is pleased to present Another Smile, an exhibition of paintings by Mark Mulroney alongside a selection of carbon transfer drawings made specifically for Dogs Bleeding Evil, the latest small edition book published through our gallery imprint. In Mulroney's new paintings we enter a world of blurred and distorted origin stories. Fetish figures and masks appropriated from an unknown culture serve as a backdrop for the flowers, melting wax and burning candles that are a staple of his personal iconography. The relationship between the two is unstated, just as it is unclear over whom his Watchers are keeping watch and whether they are benevolent or not. Though cast in a different style, this sense of ambiguity is also central to the drawings in Dogs Bleeding Evil, a visual account of an unresolved and long-running argument about the true nature of humans — are we basically good or essentially evil? As Mulroney describes it, humans are fun-loving, murderous, altruistic killing machines capable of great empathy and destruction, and the drawings in the book explore the wonders of being alive and hungry.  

Mark Mulroney lives and works in Syracuse, NY. He received his MFA from the University of California at Santa Barbara. His recent solo exhibitions have been at Mixed Greens in NYC, the Joseph Gross Gallery at the University of Arizona School of Art in Tucson and Ever Gold Gallery in San Francisco. A selection of his graphite drawings were featured in our December, 2014 group show, Chaos Hat.