Surrealist artist and fashion designer Philip Colbert's talks about how his new show that tackles everything from consumer culture, climate change to social media
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Scottish surrealist artist and fashion designer Philip Colbert has been talking about his new show that tackles a multitude of issues from consumer culture to climate change.
Colbert's solo exhibition, entitled "Hunt Paintings", runs from December 15 to January 13 next year at London's Saatchi Gallery.
"So, the 'Lobster' [one of this art inspirations] really is my mind on the canvas," said Colbert. "Yeah, it's really my relationship to art history in all the different philosophies within art history, the different approaches to painting and so it's like a, it's almost like an intellectual sort of, you know, sort of thought diagram map on canvas that happens to be very colourful."
His works, which combine pop art, virtual reality and fashion, have attracted the attention of singers Lady Gaga and Rita Ora and fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld.
“People are consuming art a lot through phones and the computer so I like the idea that those elements are reflected in my paintings,” he said at his studio in London.
His preoccupation with digital media has led Colbert to create a virtual reality world to explore the boundaries of art.
“It’s a language you can create and it can be free from the realities that we, that exist in, in normal life and that’s the beauty of it, the potential freedom.”
Colbert’s work has won acclaim from the world of fashion and music and has been shown in Japan and China, where the opening of his exhibition drew 10,000 people.
“I had my image on skyscrapers, we took over every billboard in every airport in China, we took over (Sina) Weibo, the homepage of Weibo, my artwork and my head sort of popping up for one day, which is insane.”