Mark T. Duffy
January 14 – February 11, 2023
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 14 | 5 to 8pm
An exhibition of paintings by Mark T. Duffy in /room/, juried by Micki Meng and Nkiruka Oparah.
When is Doomsday? is an exhibition of recently completed oil paintings by Mark T. Duffy depicting figures gathering and embedded in landscapes and spaces rendered in deep colors. The works were made from 2020 to 2022 in response to the radically changing social environment resulting from the pandemic, political chaos, police brutality, and climate change. For Duffy, his paintings are meant to provide viewers with a jarring aesthetic experience or feeling that is hard to express verbally. Duffy pulls from sources including found objects, current events, and art history. His paintings emerge from a process rooted in playfulness, experimentation and a search for authenticity, influenced by his interest in philosophy and psychology. Although the artist did not have a preconceived idea about the meaning of the work, what emerged for him from the process of making the paintings emphasizes the irrational and uncertain aspects of being in a society.
Mark T. Duffy (b. 1980) is a self taught artist living in Oakland, Ca. At the age of 30 he began exploring creativity to express and process experience. He has little formal training and has developed a painting process through long term experimentation. He’s interested in how power, authority, and freedom affect human suffering. When he’s not feeling too irreverent, he thinks the function of art is to generate hope and emancipatory action.