David Shrigley: Too Many Thought Bubbles

PORTRAIT BY COLIN DODGSON

In his show of new work at Anton Kern Gallery, David Shrigley has conquered each possible exhibition surface, inside and out. The artist insists that the works don’t have any theme to them “at all” and it’s all rather scatological. “There’s not a lot of drawing in them,” Shrigley said, referring to the simplicity of his style and the amount of text and image on the page. “I make them very quickly and I think about them for a long time afterward.” Besides the bronze pieces and boots, Shrigley is also showing a human rib cage made of fabric- and plaster-coated steel. He’s attracted to the materials he uses for his sculpture because of the minimal mediation. There’s no need to make a model when using a wax-carving process to mold bronze, for example, and with ceramic, “What you make is what you get … you’re working with the actual finished object right from the beginning.”

READ THE FULL ARTICLE.