This Friday, Glasgow-based David Shrigley's comprehensive survey exhibition "Brain Activity" travels across the Atlantic for the artist's first West Coast museum show at San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Shrigley matches acerbic wit with existential commentary and dystopian themes. The exhibit runs from June 22 - September 23. 'David Shrigley: Brain Activity showcases the diversity of the artist’s work — seemingly amateurish, crude drawings, sculptures made of unusual materials, and installations characterized by incongruities of scale—offering insightful and often surreal commentary on the absurdities of life, death and everything in between. Irreverent and mischievous, Shrigley’s art presents the kind of odd scenarios you never come across in real life, but wish you did.

 

Based in Glasgow, Shrigley is best known for his pared-down drawings and animations that make witty, wry and deadpan observations on a range of everyday subjects and situations. Shrigley’s doodles have a lightness that belies their incisiveness; he has developed his own unique comic aesthetic that speaks equally to popular culture and fine art, yet remains unexpectedly amusing and easily accessible. Other exhibition highlights include a selection of films and a well-known series of photographs featuring discreet interventions that the artist has orchestrated in various landscapes and interiors, injecting comedic irony into otherwise everyday banal imagery.

 

David Shrigley: Brain Activity, curated by Cliff Lauson of the Hayward Gallery, London, is the largest survey of the artist’s work to date, and features groupings of drawings and paintings on paper, a variety of sculptures, several installations, sets of photographs and a selection of animations.'