The works of Simon Foxall personify queerness in enthusiastically garish portraits which are distended from the history of painting.
Simon Foxall’s work explores a unique dichotomy between old world art, and contemporary culture. Heavily influenced by the intricately elaborate imagery of medieval and gothic genres, Foxall seeks to create similar escapist portals with his small-scale paintings. Featuring contemporary iconography inspired by pop culture, his works include everything from drag queens, fetish-wear, cowboys and Monty Python. Each piece is small and intimate in size which is in direct contrast to their expansive vision, compelling the viewer to be drawn in and participate in the experience of absorbing all that Foxall’s paintings hold.
The works of Simon Foxall personify queerness in enthusiastically garish portraits which are distended from the history of painting. His marksmanship mimics works of the medieval era, which aspired to a standard of rendering which had yet to develop and resulted in portraits which look strange or intentionally bad to our eyes today. In his new body of work he moves down the timeline of art history to the neoclassical era, which favored smooth renderings and heavy-handed symbolism. To achieve this end he invokes cultural cornerstones reimagined as humorously queer versions of themselves. If judged by the wide, toothy, fixed grins plastered to their faces, these characters are seemingly and entirely unaffected by the hellish environments they inhabit. Signifiers such as macho mustaches, rippling muscles, and spandex thongs are used to indicate an atmosphere of homoerotism which dominates the foreground and the landscape.