Andy Dixon’s Paintings Contemplate the Self-Indulgence of Leisure & Art

For It's Nice That, May 11, 2016
By Laura Snoad
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Spawned from Vancouver’s punk scene and formerly a musician, label boss and graphic designer, artist Andy Dixon has worn a number of different anti-establishment hats before settling on the painter’s beret. From depictions of the four most expensive vases ever sold at auction to pieces inspired by Google Image-searching “Canadian art”, his work is preoccupied with luxury, how it is created, accrued and traded, and how he as an artist is complicit.

Andy’s latest series Leisure Studies continues his zingy-hued social commentary by focusing in on the pastimes of the well-heeled, from squash to showjumping. Glassy-eyed stares of yachtsman and the winces of puffed-out polo players combine with a Hockney-esque palette, showing the vapidity of exertion divorced from meaningful work. Ever the punk, Andy turns the lens on himself for a piece that depicts his studio, complete with canvases from the series, the obligatory leafy pot plants and an array of colourful shirts. An ambivalent shoulder shrug at the art world’s obsession with the art market, Andy’s work is a colourful window into a world us proles can only aspire to.