TRISTAN PIGOTT
’Behind Tired Eyes’

'Behind Tired Eyes' is an exhibition of new work by London based artist, Tristan Pigott (b. 1990). The exhibition is presented at the gallery’s new Covent Garden space, 81a Endell Street, WC2H 9DX. In 'Behind Tired Eyes' Pigott creates a synthesis of painting and sculpture - a liminal landscape of two and three dimensionality which shines a spotlight on our straddled position between the real and virtual. The show explores Pigott’s preoccupation with what he refers to as “ocular fatigue” – a condition brought on by our constant vaulting between real and online existence. Mimicking a cut-copy-paste technique, Pigott has physically intercut hyper-realistic Vanitas still life and portrait paintings into large, impressionistic free standing murals of ‘screensaver’ waterfalls. With no clear indication as to where our eye might come to rest, Pigott reflects perception as a hybrid of experience. Adding to the sense of disorientation, Pigott has constructed a physical disruptor inside the gallery in the form of a fenced space. Between its steam bent wooden bars, other Vanitas still-life and portrait paintings find themselves ‘stuck’ - hung in a state of taut suspense. The fence is as much a vehicle through which to remove painting from its usual safe wall-based mount, as it is a symbol for borders and boundaries, both real and virtual. 

Mining art history and overlaying it with references from popular culture and the internet, Pigott traces the visual lineage that has brought us to where we are now. You are as likely to find a reference to a work found in the National Gallery, as you are a reference to a fashion mag, John Wayne cowboy film, google maps, drones and satellites. Pigott parody’s the manner in which big tech vies for our attention through the infinite scroll, widgits, ‘likes’, the notion that ‘I instagrammed, therefore I am’. He links the methods of today’s design architects to more rudimentary tactics of distraction, trap and capture employed by the great masters of the past, such as Hans Holbein, Angolo Bronzino, Hieronymus Bosch, Bartholomeus Bruyn the Elder and Juan Sanches Cotan. In doing so he points out that while they might be amplified today, they are in fact nothing new.

Throughout the exhibition Pigott playfully muses on the benefits of technology, such as community, interconnectivity, visual stimulation and the possibility for new creative outlets. Yet once all is said, he is keen to reassert the place of art in our digitally dominated landscape. “I predominantly paint in this kind of figurative, illusionistic style to counteract sense of disembodiment brought about by digital technology.” In our era of Zoom calls, 24hr news reels, and infinite social media scrolling, Tristan shows the importance of art as a real, tangible return to reality which, like human contact and the world’s great waterfalls, is best experienced in the flesh.

TRISTAN PIGOTT (b. 1990) lives and works in London, UK. Pigott holds a BA from Camberwell College of Arts (2009-2012) and an MA in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art (2017-2019). In 2020 Pigott featured in the Evening Standard’s New Art Power List and was recognised with the Evening Standard Young British Artist of the Year Award (2019). He featured in Wonderlands Talent Portfolio (2019). Pigott regularly features in publications such as Dazed, ID, Tank and Elephant. Notable solo exhibitions include ‘Slippery Gaze’, Alice Black Gallery, London (2019). ‘Juicy Bits’, Cob Gallery, London (2017); ‘Dead Natural’, Cob Gallery (2015); ‘Yellow Sun: The New Contemporaries’, Lagos/Port Harcourt, Nigeria (2014) and ‘Hyperion’, New York, USA (2016). In 2015, Pigott was shortlisted for the BP Portrait Award and has featured in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.

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