Devin Troy StrotherUS

Devin Troy Strother (b. 1986, US) plucks materials out of their expected context and gives them back refigured as complex and multi-layered collages, sculptures and installations that are characterised by a highly spontaneous, unmistakable individual style.

Trademark cartoon-like figures striking celebratory poses fill scenes as various as basketball courts, discos, woodland, and domestic interiors in works that abound in narrative references to politics, music and sport. Strother openly explores clear references and influences that shape his lens on art and the process of its creation – the visual language of Philip Guston being a recent example.

Whilst the work maintains a brilliantly playful aesthetic, using colour to jubilant effect (rainbows and neons reoccur as a motif), its content muses on the multifarious – both overt and concealed – injuries to human dignity in our society. If Strother’s work is about conflict, it revels in an abundant creativity, melding the cynical voice of irony with a purist belief in beauty that, together, act to overcome that conflict.