David Leggett

David Leggett’s ultra-vivid canvases mash-up a love-hate fascination with both machismo in hip-hop culture and the unyielding influence of 1980s German painters in current contemporary painting. No one is sacred in Leggett’s work – from Precious to Rick Ross to Gerhard Richter to the artist himself – his satirical images often punctuated by barbed comedic one-liners, a strategy influenced by the stand-up comedians he listens to in the studio. Leggett's manipulation of cartoon imagery and caricature reveals the influence of Chicago Imagists like Karl Wirsum and Jim Nutt. His use of craft materials, however, complicates his relationship to painting as googly eyes, rhinestones, pom-poms, felt, glitter, gold and silver leaf add a layer of absurdity to Leggett’s reverence for his painting heroes.