Summer Breeze 2021

Mark Kostabi's, *Summer Breeze*, captivates with its smooth surfaces and vibrant color palette, composed of yellow, red, and blue gradients. The painting features two stylized figures embracing under a crimson parasol, set against a seascape with sailboats. Kostabi destabilizes traditional notions of identity through his figures. They are faceless, and rendered in stark, contrasting tones, which prompts a questioning of the individual's role within social structures. The beach setting, with the beach ball, and a sun hat, evokes leisure, but also hints at deeper themes of alienation and the loss of individuality in modern society. The painting's flattened perspective and absence of depth further emphasize its artifice, challenging fixed meanings of space. Through these formal qualities, Kostabi creates a dialogue about the self and its relationship to culture. The canvas becomes a site for exploring how we construct meaning in a world saturated with coded images.