Raymond Pettibon’s drawings take their point of departure in the blatant confidence of a propaganda product. On the outside these are so simple, seductive and convincing that they settle in people’s minds as their own ideas. He values this mixture of stereotype and confusion.
Pettibon pulls his figures in black ink from the stream of cultural images. Words land on the paper, in another voice, with new thoughts and notions and a tension arises in the ensemble of splotches, contrasts and reflections. The lines of writing are interrupted and loose brushstrokes - like the players of drunken speech - uncouple the rest.
His drawings probe gaps and inconsistencies within propaganda imagery and text. In his world punks are suddenly dreamy and gay, women become merciless judges and victims of their own agency and gunmen turn into mothers’ boys. Pettibon’s drawings ultimately reveal his political atheism.
