Friends Will Be Friends 2019

Michael Cheval created this surreal scene, maybe fairly recently, using oils, building up layers of pigment to create a shimmering dreamscape. I love the figure taking centre stage, decked out in a jester's hat. Look how they're casually slicing through a planet on a plate! I can imagine Cheval in his studio, thinking about gravity and the cosmos, and also maybe thinking about his own role as an artist, as a kind of cosmic trickster. The colours are also interesting. It’s a limited palette of greens and reds, but just enough to conjure a whole strange world. It's as if Cheval is saying, ‘Here, let me serve you up a slice of the universe,’ inviting us to question what’s real and what’s not. Artists are always responding to each other, playing with ideas across centuries. Cheval makes you think about the grand tradition of surrealist painters like Magritte and Dalí, but with his own unique, playful spin, creating his own site of inquiry through paint.