Enrico David

Enrico David’s large-scale canvases explore personal identity within the public domain. Dealing with issues of queer politics, David appropriates elements from modernist design and contemporary culture to develop an intimate platform of fantasy and revelation. Created in embroidery on tie-dyed fabric, Stick of Rock presents a quirky sexuality based equally in high fashion, subculture, and home craft. Dressed in a Pucci-esque catsuit, David’s svelte poseur is both exhibitionist and stealth-like. His sleek figure is transformed by its woollen texture, drawing peculiar and humorous reference to S&M, bondage, and role-play with its seductively cuddly material. Through an incredibly time consuming process of hand stitching, Enrico David renders intimate sentiment as an anonymous aesthetic icon. Centring his subject on a luxuriously dyed canvas, David adapts the type of classic composition associated with the art deco designer Erté. Fabricated from sumptuous silk thread and yarn, David crafts a refined elegance that’s both austere and tactile. Approaching fashion as folly, David’s swarthy figure is mysteriously chic, a blackened silhouette rejoicing in its ‘invisible’ intrigue. Hinting at a sexual awakening, or blossoming innocence, the ornate head makes reference to Georgia O’Keefe’s flower paintings. 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. Enrico David’s stylised figures draw upon the carnival-esque, their elaborate costumed appearance both celebrates and closets their identity. Set a la Bond girl against a sumptuous candyfloss pink ground, Cora presents a naughty intrigue associated with a more romantic and innocent time. Through both his subject and media, David confronts the boundaries of gender expectation: rendered through the traditional women’s art of needlework, Cora’s body is suspiciously asexual, ‘her’ butterfly head spanning in demure reference to female genitalia.