We are pleased to present the second online viewing room of new paintings by the prolific artist Keith Boadwee.  These latest paintings, portraits of cartoon frog characters smoking cigarettes in front of music posters, continue the artist’s on-going portrait adjacent series.  These new works come on the heels of his recent  series of smoking fish paintings.  The images in the posters serve as miniature paintings within paintings, and are all iconic in their own right, depicting famous album covers and iconic rock photos ranging from The Clash’s London Calling, to Kraftwerk’s The Man Machine.  All the musicians featured have had rabid fan followings during their heydays and continue to hold important subcultural (if not pop cultural) significance.  

These new works continue to build on themes established in Boadwee’s recent fish paintings. They are playful, embedded with the artist’s well-known sardonic humor, and are relatable. Only an artist with a truly unique outlook and sense of humor could take inspiration from a respiratory focused pandemic to produce paintings which seem to glamorize the act of smoking. 

Through the use of iconography these paintings place themselves in a conversation about fanhood, subculture, and what it means to be digressive; but rather than creating an artistic gesture that embodies transgressiveness (as seen throughout Boadwee’s career such as his photographic and performative works) these latest works seem to make light of our culture’s desire to fetishize the rebel.