Sebastian Chaumeton

Sebastian's work tries its best to make social commentary on the issues of today. Through the lens of memes and internet culture, armed with a whimsical magic realism, his paintings touch on a variety of ideas from trolls, tweets and triggers to materiality, masculinity and morals. The backbone to most of his work revolves around context and its dilution in an oversaturated world of information and images. He plays with context and enjoys subverting meaning in unnecessary convoluted metaphors and memes. In doing so Chaumeton attempts to highlight the viewers’ predisposed prejudices and assumptions of images they are confronted with. This concept is similarly reflected in how he creates paintings by using a variety of mediums, ranging from the classical oils and acrylic paints to found objects, fabrics and sculpted elements. Not only does this challenge your perceptions of what you are looking at, but also slows down the viewing process to counteract the immediacy of the images one receives online. He often take these ideas further into performative video, self interviews, “instructional” tutorials and sculptures, often deploying humour as a playful tool to layer his ideas further...like an onion.