Raymond Pettibon (b. 1957, Tuscon) is known for a prolific corpus of drawings characterised by certain enduring themes – baseball players, surging trains, waves, political figures and film-noir encounters. Ranging in scale and subject, Pettibon’s drawings hone in on certain objects, incidents or vistas, depicting modern America from a myriad of angles whilst ambiguously severing these images from a narrative context. Fragments of handwritten text – placed alongside or threaded within the imagery – add multiple shades of meaning and irony. At once personal and universal, Pettibon’s works blur the categories of art history – compressing elements of painting, cartoons, poetry, the novel and polemics.
