PROGRESS BE LYK: An Interview with Shawn Huckins
Nowhere is the idea of renewal more playful than in the work of Shawn Huckins. Elegant portraits and history paintings from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are interrupted by LOLs and WTFs, combining methods of communication from the past and present in a way that’s both contemplative and hilarious.
Huckins’ historical images are paired with overlaid acronyms and tweets that poke fun at the dilapidated state of our language; the series, American Revolution, utilized paintings originally made between the 1760s and 1820s, and The American ___tier broadened the scope, incorporating landscapes and portraits from the 1820s to 1900. “The whole idea was to choose periods of past American transformation and contrast them with today’s evolution, good or bad,” he said.
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