Toys and a knife

Pol Taburet imbues his paintings with an array of references taken from hip-hop clips, cartoons, Caribbean voodoo, and Greco-Roman mythology. The artist depicts apparitions of persons and objects against solid-colour backgrounds, often with piercing, red-eyed faces and mouths filled with shiny grillz, the dental prostheses made from precious metals and that rappers use as symbols of their success. 

His recent painting Toys and a Knife (2022) orchestrates a visual poem haunted by ghostly presences, black faces under electric-coloured hoods, about to step out of the frame. Sex toys and a knife lie on the bed, leading viewers to question the nature of this scene, which lies somewhere between the threatening and the grotesque, pleasure and mischief, and fear and fantasy.