Jersey City, NJ – Jonathan LeVine Projects proudly presents Love Has Never Been a Popular Movement, Mark Doox’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery. Continuing the artist’s distinctive fusion of Byzantine-styled iconography and Dadaist strategies, this new body of mixed-media acrylic collage paintings explores contemporary American Christianity and the rise of Christian nationalism.
Working within a deliberately constructed iconographic system, Doox examines the theological, political, and cultural forces shaping contemporary Christian nationalism through use of recurring figures such as Typical White Christ, Jesus Impossible: The Black Messiah, and Baphomet Saint Sambo (among others). Each icon contributes to the larger visual argument about power, belief, and devotion, demonstrating how sacred imagery can be challenged without losing its authority.
The result is a cohesive iconographic argument that places contemporary Christian ideology under scrutiny. Using sacred and secular symbols as structural language, the artist constructs images that expose and critique how religious ideas can be harnessed to cultural power rather than spiritual transformation. The works neither mock belief nor reject faith itself, but insist on the ethical gravity of Christ’s teachings, revealing how religion can be redirected from humility, love, and grace toward nationalism, hierarchy, and political identity.
Positioned between reverence and rupture, these icons function as contemporary relics and invite viewers to confront the distance between the ethical teachings attributed to Christ and the ideologies constructed in His name. Love Has Never Been a Popular Movement asks whether love, in its most demanding and disruptive sense, can survive once religion becomes popular, institutionalized, and aligned with state power.
Mark Doox is an artist known for his distinctive style, ‘Byzantine Dadism’, which combines elements of Byzantine iconography with Dadaist aesthetics. Trained in traditional Byzantine iconography as a monk in his twenties at an Eastern Orthodox monastery, his work explores themes of identity, power, accommodation, and myth. He was recently featured in The New York Times for his graphic novel, The N-Word of God, recipient of the 2024 Award for Excellence from the Society of Illustrators Museum of Cartoon and Comic Art. Doox was also a finalist in Jonathan LeVine Projects’ annual Delusional art show and juried competition. His work has been presented in numerous solo and group exhibitions, as well as permanent church installations, including the Cathedral Church of St. John Divine in New York City. He has participated in performances, talks, and films, and has been featured in multiple publications, including several scholarly books and journals.
Jonathan LeVine Projects is committed to new and cutting-edge art. Its roots date back to 1995 when LeVine’s life-long participation in punk and underground music grew into a curatorial experiment with the visual culture that surrounded him. In 2005, he opened Jonathan LeVine Gallery in the Chelsea district of New York City and had great success nurturing the careers of many celebrated artists. In 2017, the gallery relocated to Jersey City with a newfound focus on community and collaboration. The renamed Jonathan LeVine Projects aims to create engaging programs and interesting partnerships beyond the traditional gallery space. With an eye toward honoring and connecting with the history and context of Post War art, Jonathan LeVine Projects explores the terrain of the high, the low, and everything in between. In 2019, Jonathan LeVine Projects transitioned from a brick-and-mortar gallery to a virtual exhibition platform, spearheading a digital marketplace for fine art.
