why i want to f**k donald trump AT joshua liner GALLERY, new york
13th october 2016 - 12th novemeber 2016
“Here, for the first time, boundaries became blurred between conventional painted political portraiture, mainstream cutting-edge art (of the YBA pantheon), and the longer tradition of biting British political satire”
Tim Marlow, Artistic Director of the Royal Academy of Arts, 2013
Jonathan Yeo’s Bush, the first in his Porn Collage Series, was made in 2007 after an official commission to paint the then President of the United States, George W. Bush, fell through. After his initial disappointment Yeo decided to make this ironic homage, which uses explicit images from pornographic magazines to make the flesh tones in the portrait, to satirise the assumed moral superiority of the extreme right in American politics.
First displayed in the window of Lazarides Gallery in Soho, London, in 2007, the image went viral, with Yeo achieving instant notoriety on both sides of the Atlantic. It went on to be shown at Lazarides' ‘Outsiders New York' exhibition in 2008 and again at Yeo’s first solo show in the States, ‘Porn in the USA’, which took place in 2010 in Beverly Hills.
More recently, running concurrently with the 2016 US presidential elections, an edition was included in the group show ‘Why I want f**k Donald Trump’ at the Joshua Liner Gallery in New York. The show, running until November 13th, 'includes numerous artists whose work collectively comments on the intersection of American politics and the over-sexualized cult of celebrity, as well as the sensationalism surrounding politics, crystallized in this election.’
