Slawn

Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner

Slawn is a Nigerian-born, London-based creative who has swiftly become a dynamic voice in contemporary art. Known for his distinctive, unpolished style and irreverent persona, Slawn’s practice perhaps goes furthest in bringing the world of popular culture into the realm of fine art. With collaborations spanning Louis Vuitton to Wingstop, Slawn’s appeal has contributed to the redefinition of the domain of operation for contemporary artists in the digital age. 

The present lot exemplifies the style which brought the artist to prominence. In this work, the animated heads of various figures are interwoven with linear patterns, akin to the graffit-strewn walls of the inner cities where creatives develop their distinguishing motifs (or ‘tag’). Here we see the foundations of what Slawn would later adopt as a central motif – the distorted Mickey Mouse figure – a curious assemblage of popular cartoons adapted by artists such as Keith Haring, Andy Warhol and KAWS, infused with elements of the pejorative Jim Crow era imagery which ridiculed facial features attributed to individuals of African ancestry. In blending these elements, Slawn couches his work within a lineage of Pop art, and, very controversially, contributes a uniquely Black perspective to this branch of art history.

Slawn has always disavowed characterisation as an artist, often citing his lack of a formal art education and contempt for the pretences of the ‘art world’. In many ways, Slawn does display an irreverence for art which is commensurate with this contention. The present lot, for example, was delivered to its owner from the artist’s studio as an unstretched canvas folded into a plastic bag. However, in identifying his practice as alienated from the formal attributes of the discipline, the artist reveals a respect for the profession of art which is rather divergent from the persona he purports to espouse. If the artist’s recent debut exhibition at Saatchi Yates is anything to go by, that divergence will prove to be an innovative and compelling strategy.