Published to coincide with a solo presentation of "The Hoax Suite" by British painter Justin Mortimer at The Armory Show in New York in 2018 with London-based gallery Parafin, the publication presents the thirty works that comprise this exceptional series of paintings depicting dead and dying flowers, offering an intense exposition of still life, or perhaps more aptly, nature morte. From one direction, pure abstraction threatens to rupture into physical space and matter from the other, figuration almost collapses into the abstraction that engulfs it. With Mortimer's characteristic combination of darkness and beauty, melancholy and metaphysics, observation and interpretation, the "Hoax" series is not only a significant body of work within the artist's oeuvre, but perhaps also one of the most significant series of paintings of flowers in our time. Alongside new photography of all the paintings, the book features a specially commissioned essay by London-based writer Freya Cooper Kiddie, in which she investigates the techniques and aesthetics of a series that fuses decaying organic matter with corrupted digital technology. While "The Hoax Suite" is an exploration of the dialogue between figuration and abstraction, its themes are manifold, from the contemplation of mortality to faded beauty and lost love - fragrant flowers in full bloom, as if to deceive us, soon decay. Here, in these dank, acrid, darkly psychedelic works, Mortimer shines a flashlight on the spectral beauty of death, and in doing so, reminds us that life is the agonizing yet ecstatic explosion of color that fleetingly fills the void.