Life’s Messy, David Shrigley’s Laughing

Sometimes you need a ‘reality check’ to come to your senses, and David Shirgley is the uninvited guest of those moments. Softly approaching our fragile nature, Shirgley creates a space for himself through the cracks of life with his absurdist art; in his world, there is a universe where just existing is a kind of freedom and we can dance in the layers of the absurd…

A collision point of absurdity, black humor and tragedy, David Shirgley poetically reinterprets the banality of everyday life. At first glance, his drawings and animations present a simple and naive aesthetic, but their subtext contains a deep criticism and a jarring reality. Shirgley’s work invites us into the pure world of childhood while presenting the complexity of adulthood – a playground that the artist creates between our life experiences, gently touching our hearts.  

The humorous language of Shirgley’s work tragicomically reveals the deepest human emotional conflicts. The innocent and uncanny figures that we often find in his drawings are more than mere entertainment; they become an image that embodies all human fragility, passion and sadness.  

Every trace of life, from the deepest wounds to the most unexpected joys, is hidden in this humor – as if inviting us to rediscover the world with a broken love, laughing and crying at the same time. Shirgley’s drawings are characterized by both childlike joy and deep existential sadness, and in bringing these two together, he depicts a way of experiencing the subtle beauty and pain that life offers us.

David Shirgley’s world has a bold and provocative romanticism, while encouraging us to embrace our own contradictions. In his art, we confront our inner child and simultaneously feel the weight of being an adult. 

If you look around you and nothing remarkable happens, if you think that inspiration is something that comes with the storks and finds you, David Shirgley is here to mock your misconceptions until they burn to ashes. He is here as an uninvited guest in our ADHD-filled heads, with the sole purpose of messing up our lives puzzle! However, he does not do this out of malice. In the messiness of complexity he finds peace; and mixes colours, ideas and writings to remind us how much our most fragile parts are actually like us…