Chris Hood (b. 1984, Atlanta, GA) plays directly with the picture plane, teasing the very notion of 'surface.' In his paintings, Hood aims to describe an experience where the physical and the virtual fuse and sit in a third, liminal space. Subsumed, stained, and bound by the surface of the painting, he often uses vernacular sources and humor to point to the tension in this uneasy experience. The interplay between characters amongst the layers of paint also activates a third type of response in the sometimes surreal, or psychedelic, painterly joining of imagery and color. In an enigmatic blend between clear figuration and errant abstraction, Hood creates a world within his set physical and material limitations.

Hood has held solo exhibitions at Lyles & King, New York, US, Eduardo Secci, Florence, IT; Praz-Delavallade, Los Angeles, US; 68projects, Berlin, DE; Mier Gallery Los Angeles, US and Galerie Bernard Ceysson, Geneva, CH. Hood’s work has been included in group exhibitions at VENUS Los Angeles; The Museum of Museums, Seattle, US; Torrance Art Museum, Zuckerman Museum of Art, Atlanta, US; Saatchi Gallery, London, UK; and CANADA, New York, US. His work has been covered in Art in America, Hyperallergic, Galerie Magazine, ELEPHANT, Whitehot, Mousse Magazine, The Art Newspaper, and TimeOut New York among others. In 2023 his work was selected for the Art in the Embassies program for the American Embassy in Budapest, Hungary. He received an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2010. Hood lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.

My works have an uneasy humor and curiosity about them that unfolds over time. Their forms coalesce and disintegrate simultaneously while pushing for novelty and surprise within the act of creation.