Anthony Lister: Abstract Superheroes
Anthony Lister malt Superhelden und andere Ikonen der Pop-Kultur. Allerdings nicht unbedingt so, wie man es gewohnt ist …
In his latest series, Lister continues his examination of pop culture and how a generation raised on American television processes and interprets the symbols and imagery of their youth. The result is gender bending cartoon characters, superheroes such as Wonder Woman and Bat Girl, and other villains of unusual shape and size, that uncover the unconscious sexual desires and repressed taboos embedded in these seemingly innocuous popular icons. The artist insists that his paintings have no overarching message or sociological comment, he simply sees his superheroes and villains as the classical gods and goddesses of our modern society, and likes to toy with the symbols and characters so many of us have grown up with. The work contains a circular perspective, one that shifts between, even confuses the non-rational inner workings of the child and adult mind. Yet this inescapable paradox of the human condition, wherein we are at all times evolving from and dependent upon the experiences of youth, is unlocked by Lister’s painterly antics, and revealed to be the utterly serious and impossibly ridiculous condition it is. Lister’s practice is indeed about reality. A reality his work does not claim to resolve, but rather to question, loudly.
via Superlevel