Enrico David

Enrico David’s embroideries create a camp theatricality; his figures emerge as staged constructions, paralleling outward appearance with inner fantasy. In Agent, David’s crouching figure is set in monotone against blended grey ground, creating the inside-out suggestion of photographic negative. Within the red trimmed contours, an image of a warrior appears, reminiscent of Japanese woodcuts. Heavily stitched with thick wool, Agent’s burly soft texture both highlights and undermines the perception of strength and masculinity, portraying a dandy of heroic proportions.

‘Drawing is the starting point for most of my work, from the rendering of a photographic image to a more intuitive, spontaneous approach…’

He is a brilliant and authentically creative stylist who has digested everything from Venice carnival to Picasso’s 1920s classical period, late Malevich, Joe Orton and Francis Bacon…

David’s accompanying statement rather convolutedly plays on his and the work’s relationship with nostalgia and memory, boldly pondering whether ‘any of this will be delivered with enough clarity or adequacy of intentions, either to myself or anyone else.’ The work suggests not. The force of structural consideration that David’s words implies seems to be absent from a flimsily realised work…