Hayden Kays has been widely acclaimed as one of the most vital and provocative artists of his generation, producing work that both celebrates and critiques the all-pervasive ‘culture industry’. Kays’s work is characterised by bold imagery, acerbic wordplay, accomplished craftsmanship and deadpan humour. His witty appropriations of everyday references both respond to and subvert the canons set out by 1950s Pop Art and the YBAs of the 1990s.
In a world of non-stop livesteams and information economies, where the commercial and the political are simply two notes in the same chord and subversiveness has long been co-opted into the cultural mainstream, Kays’s creations challenge the viewer to question what they see both within the gallery space and in the world outside.