Art-Sheep Features: Tristan Pigott’s Bizzare World Plays With Perception

by Maria Sofou

London-based artist Tristan Pigott graduated from Camberwell College of Arts in 2012 and has since exhibited his work in multiple galleries in London.

Pigott’s oil paintings have a snapshot-ish quality, like everyday scenes that you could find on social media – friends sitting on the subway, two guys drinking a beer, a girl putting on makeup while her friend next to her is reading a magazine. However, his scenes feel both everyday and surreal as his realistic figures often find themselves in surreal narratives with out-of-context and gravity-defying objects creating an uncomfortable world.

Pigott’s artworks play with the viewers’ perception and transfer them into a bizzare and somehow awkward world in which he explores human characteristics using both drama and satire – his paintings are realistic and dream-like at the same time.

“The suggestion of action plays an important role in my paintings. It provokes the viewer’s interpretation, as opposed to simple objectification, of the subject within their surroundings. Allowing me to develop my interest in the cyclical nature of everyday life, a reoccurring theme in my work. Every day actions such as eating and drinking mirror similarly habitual and automated psychological traits such as arrogance and anxiety. These themes are portrayed using personal sources, playing on people’s characteristics, putting them in surreal narratives and showing the theatricality of the situation.”