David Shrigley

Making sense seem like nonsense is one way to describe David Shrigley’s faux-naif work, which combines sweet childlike rendering with a sour, sardonic tone.

Here the space is salon hung with paintings, such as a crude, store-hours sign marked closed for each day. In a POV video resembling an arcade game, a driver hurtles heedlessly past wretched souls along the highway, crying for help.

In Shrigley’s world, whimsy becomes torment, and black humor settles on innocence like coal dust on snow.—Howard Halle