OPENING SATURDAY
Buddy Can You Spare a Meme
Mark Flood
Curated by JD DiFabbio
March 21st - April 25th, 2026
On view Saturdays, 12-6pm
5419 Glissman Road, Austin, TX 78702
Opening Events: Saturday, March 21st
Members Preview, 6-7pm, Become a Member
Public Reception, 7-11pm, RSVP
Sponsored by Austin Beerworks, Tito's Handmade Vodka, and LALO Tequila
Mark Flood returns to Co-Lab Projects after 13 years with an exhibition opening Saturday, March 21, 2026. In this latest work, Flood dives headfirst into the shallow end of memes. He again turns his caustic, mocking eye to his favorite subject matter–the contemporary art world. Flood takes one of the most prevalent forms of humor in the digital era and perverts it into culture warfare body horror aimed squarely at the art world itself. Memes, typically viewed on a screen where no one can judge you for your private amusement, will now be blazoned onto large canvases and displayed graffiti-style on the gallery walls. This body of work, designed to offend, dares you to laugh in public.
Under his many monikers, Flood has always been many things at once: painter, writer, musician, punk, satirist, champion and critic of the art world he inhabits. His work strips away pretension and mocks self-importance, using dark humor to defang the systems that try to mold us. He refuses easy political positions or earnest messaging. Instead, he invites us to laugh at ourselves—art-worlders and civilians alike—exposing the absurdities of contemporary culture through distortion and subversion. If you can laugh about the darkest aspects of life, this work suggests, you can neuter them.
On Saturday, April 18, 2026, in collaboration with Fusebox Festival, Co-Lab will present a performance inside the Flood installation by San Francisco-based sound artist Victoria Shen (a.k.a. Evicshen). Shen makes noise—the chaotic, physical, body-rattling kind that you feel in your stomach. Working with analog modular synthesizers, vinyl/resin records, and self-built electronics, she defies conventional harmony and rhythm for extreme textures and corporeal tones. Her sounds oscillate between moments of restraint and swells of frenetic and confrontational movement.
Together, Flood and Shen operate on the same adversarial frequency. Both artists weaponize humor and chaos against established systems—he through visual mockery, she through sonic assault. Where Flood asks you to laugh at the art world's absurdities, Shen makes you feel the discomfort of sound pushed past its breaking point. Neither artist offers you comfort or easy answers. They offer you a mirror, amplified and distorted, reflecting back the ridiculous machinery of contemporary culture at volumes impossible to ignore.
Mark Flood is an interdisciplinary artist known for his irreverent, punk-inspired critiques of the art world, mass media, and consumer culture based in Houston, TX.
Mark Flood’s work has been widely exhibited in solo and group shows across the United States and internationally. His solo exhibitions include Lace Paintings at Marty Walker Gallery in Dallas (2006), American Fine Art in New York (2004), and Peres Projects in Berlin (2015). He has also shown at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (2016) and Karma in New York (2020). Group exhibitions have included Pretty Ugly, co-hosted by Gavin Brown’s Enterprise and Maccarone in New York, as well as numerous other shows throughout his career.
Flood’s work is held in the permanent collections of prestigious institutions, including the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, and The Menil Collection. His work is also part of the Rubell Family Collection in Miami and international collections such as the Taguchi Art Collection in Tokyo.
