Llyn Foulkes: Bombs Away

“A lot of my stuff is in opposition. My machine. My paintings. I’ve been fighting against something the whole time.” —Llyn Foulkes

Gagosian is pleased to announce Bombs Away, an exhibition of paintings, sculptures, and mixed-media works produced by Llyn Foulkes between 2018 and 2022.

Highly diverse, tough to categorize, and often wickedly confrontational, Foulkes’s body of work includes landscape and portrait paintings, mixed-media constructions, and narrative tableaux. Having progressed from the unsettling imagery of his early 1960s paintings, through the geological and postcard subjects of his late ’60s and early ’70s work, to the “bloody head” series of figures from later that decade, he also became known for singular combinations of painting with wood, found clothing, and upholstery fabric. Foulkes’s mordant social commentary has consistently targeted human cruelty and challenged the excesses of corporate America—particularly the Walt Disney Company.

Whatever their medium and format, Foulkes’s works are characterized by their provocative subjects and unexpected formal juxtapositions. In the sculpture The Broken Chain (2020), a lion, standing on an antique-style library card catalogue, bites into a bald eagle in flight, while a nude mannequin looks on. Le Bomb (2020), another jarring assemblage of found objects, features the titular weapon projecting from a gnarled tree trunk. Ivanka (2022) incorporates fragments of animal hide and jawbone into a brutally unflattering portrait of Donald Trump’s eldest daughter and former senior adviser, while Surrender (2022) tackles the war in Ukraine, picturing a sickle-wielding figure blindfolded by the blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flag.