Oli Epp
b. 1994, United Kingdom
Oli Epp (b. 1994, London, UK) succeeds and without reducing his art to anything like illustration or sheer, weary social commentary. His paintings—begun as instinctive drawings, passing through Photoshop and then spun out in seductive yet unnerving canvases whose impeccably punchy compositions combine oil, acrylic and spray—pop vivaciously whether seen in person or onscreen. At first glance, they’re pleasurable things: typically, though not always, focused on a single figure (or, perhaps, entity), they have a cartoonish brightness about them and as the eye slides over their wipe-clean surfaces, smoothly gradated fields of colour and fluent bursts of Photorealism, they’re gratifying to look at. But all of this, it’s quickly apparent, serves as a counterweight to an abundant anxiety concerning what we are morphing into as a species.