Felix Treadwell
b. 1992, United Kingdom
“FEELO is the name of the character I’ve been working on for the last year It’s a nickname I used to have in school. The inspiration behind FEELO’s style and persona comes from fashion blogs, early Hypebeast clothing and even myself as a teenager. I had intended it to be this anonymous protagonist who explores these different worlds, but I realised it is really more autobiographical, if androgynous. I feel like Feelo is like an outsider infiltrating this world.” — Felix Treadwell, 2021.
There is a hypnotic, other-worldly presence to Treadwell’s cartoon-esque figures. Painted with a combination of spray and acrylic in a deliberately muted, gentle palette, his characters move through vacant space, divorced from any specific place or time, their clothing the only signifiers in the compositions. In their stasis and quasi-abstracted form, they recall the exaggerated detail of Domenico Gnoli, the wistfulness of Yoshitomo Nara and the trippy innocence and awkwardness of Zebedee, Ermintrude and Doogal in the British children’s television series The Magic Roundabout (BBC, 1965) more than an aesthetic of the post-digital age, but their simplicity is similarly deceptive. These pared-down compositions are an antidote to the speed and surfeit of imagery we are subjected to daily via social and other media, allowing for a slowing down, a moment of quieter contemplation, their deliberate banality both soothing and intriguing.
“I guess, in my work, I have always been returning to my childhood or youth and looking at longing for something I wished or wanted to have, and looking at how nostalgia affects one” Felix Treadwell, 2021.
Treadwell (b. 1992, Maidstone, United Kingdom) lives and works in London and holds a BFA from the Camberwell College of Art and an MFA from the Royal College of Art.
Recent solo exhibitions include ‘Kindred Lands’, Carl Kostyál (Stockholm, 2022); Taipei Dangdai (Taipei, 2022); ‘Gentle Creatures’, Woaw Gallery (Hong Kong, 2022); ‘Buff Titan’, L21 Gallery (Palma, 2021); ‘Dominion’, Dopeness Art Lab (Taipei, 2021); ‘Rupert and Friends’, Union Gallery, Bethnal Green (London, 2017); ‘Dark Age’, L21 Gallery (Palma, 2018); ‘Community’, LTD Los Angeles, (Los Angeles, 2019); ‘Little Dark Fantas’, Union Gallery, (London, 2019); and ‘FEELO’, L21 Gallery, (Palma, 2020).
Recent group shows include ‘Stockholm Sessions’, Carl Kostyál (Stockholm, 2021); ‘Can’t Wait To Meet You’, Primary Projects (Miami, 2021); ‘DONTGIVEADAMNS’, Gallerie Marian Cramer (Amsterdam, 2020); ‘2x2x2’, imlabor (Tokyo, 2020); ‘ADIEU TO OLD ENGLAND, THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT’, Choi & Lager Gallery (Cologne, 2019); ‘There’s Something About Painting’, Tatjana Pieters Gallery (Gent, 2019); ‘Deeply’, Galleria Patricia Armocida (Milan, 2019).