If you’re familiar with Tristan Pigott, you may think of his work as photorealist oil painting. After all, he was nominated for the BP Portrait Award a couple of years ago where the ability to portray an image as realistically as possible is championed above all else. But as the artist opens his new exhibition, Juicy Bits, at Cob Gallery, this description begins to waver in its usefulness.
The artist’s new works, such as Hold the Line, or Provisional Feelings, still demonstrate Pigott’s tremendous ability to replicate the reality of his subjects. These new oil paintings go beyond mere representation though. Where once placed in familiar urban settings, such as London Overground trains, his subjects are now situated amongst colourful dreamlike backdrops filled with symbolism and recurring motifs. You could say that these are photosurrealist oil paintings.
Juicy Bits marks a new direction in Pigott’s work. Not only has his painting developed, but his entire practice has experienced a notable transition. In this show, Pigott ventures into 3D-printed sculptures and time-lapse videos with works that discuss identity, ego, and the traditional still life theme of ‘nature morte’. The exhibition will also feature a site-specific installation; an imagined living room resembling what a young twenty-something may have today. This installation will also act as a stage for the artist to paint a new work each day the exhibition is open. We spoke to the artist about three of his favourite works in the new exhibition.
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Fake Plastic Flowers
“I think there’s an interesting contradiction of how we’re more aware than ever of the realities of the world yet seemingly more self obsessed than ever! Fake Plastic Flowers is about that confidence in our uniqueness and belief in our ability to control our fate despite common mentalities, whether it be following trends or finding ways to cut corners! The girl in the painting appears in a familiar pose, until you look closer and realise she’s picking her teeth, which again is something we’ve all done.”
SMS Me
“I’ve branched out a bit from the nature morte theme to less traditional still life portraiture. An example would be SMS Me, which depicts a cucumber with a cut-out smiley face placed as if watching an iPhone (TV), depicting a recreation of Velaszquez’s Rokeby Venus, but made from cucumbers… There’s a more sordid feeling to SMS Me, with peelings and slices of another cucumber. A condom at the top leads the viewer into suspecting the smiley face cucumber has mutilated another cucumber for its sexual pleasure. The large cucumber and two slices share an emoji-esque smiley face between them. The painting acts as a metaphor for middle-class anxieties towards sex, as well commenting on new technologies and trends like dating apps and sexting. I wanted to have an overarching theme connecting the works that was playful and flexible. I felt the cucumber fitted this role perfectly. It has sexual/phallic symbolism, but can also relate to fashionably-inclined members of the middle-class, in its use in water or make-up products.
Juicy Bits
“The painting is about questioning what happens to originality and creativity in a globalised digital world — you can learn anything! But there’s no hierarchy of quality, other than endless best of lists! In Juicy Bits, there’s an broadband box with cut off wires and a cut cucumber in a takeaway box acting as symbols for impotence, there’s also a couple having sex amongst the abstract shapes of the background giving the work a bizarre perspective. It’s almost a lesson in ‘how not to paint a still life painting’.”
Credits
Text Alexander Glover