Screenprint, edition of 200
Signed by the artist
2010

Barry Reigate’s works enshrine the most basic instincts of desire and horror. Reflective of the aggression and violence of working class stereotype, Reigate adopts a brash, ‘no-apologies’ attitude towards the levelling of cultural hierarchy. Using loaded signifiers, such as Mickey Mouse minstrels and the hedonistic decadence of 80s Memphis design, his work ironically revives the ethos of ‘primitivism’ and the edgy indulgence of the neo-geo period to construct darkly humorous parodies of today’s attitudes towards commodity, fetish, and cultural taboo. His use of controversial subjects serves to underscore the hypocrisy that surrounds issues such as sexuality, race and class.

Merging the seamless gloss of graphic design with the integrity of exPress pickionism, Reigate’s jumbled compositions celebrate great painting. Executed over ultra-flat airbrushed skies, masses of gargantuan breasts are monumentalised and given tangible weight through thick, creamy impasto, formally interspersed with colourful motifs of comic folly. Equating the act of painting itself to a certain depravity, Reigate revels in executing squiggly brush marks, phallic smears, and generously indulgent highlights, ensuring the viewer knows every inch of his canvas has been thoroughly man-handled.

In sharing his own mammophiliac predilections, Reigate approaches high art production with an earnest dumbness, enshrining the most basic instincts of desire and horror in all their awkward, puerile, and embarrassing glory. Reigate revives the primitivism 20th c. artistic inspiration and the ghetto-ised attitudes of cultural hierarchy as a zombie-esque parody, creating his own numina, monsters, and totems from the seedy juju of contemporary schmaltz.

Presenting the macho fetishism of painting with a humorous twist, Reigate embraces the abjection of Philip Guston, George Condo, and Sean Landers; his debased subject providing a critical allegory for art historical attitudes as well as current cultural zeitgeist.