Preston Paperboy brings to the Mona Lisa — the most reproduced, most discussed, most parodied image in the history of Western art — a visual language drawn from street art, graffiti, and the urban aesthetic that has increasingly defined serious contemporary painting since the 1980s. MLISA2 is his second engagement with the subject: a work that takes da Vinci's enigmatic figure and places her in a visual context that is simultaneously irreverent and deeply considered.
The street art tradition has always been interested in the canonical image — in what happens when you place the most famous painting in the world on a wall rather than in a museum, when you surround it with the visual language of the street rather than the silence of the gallery. Preston Paperboy continues this investigation with the technical command and compositional intelligence of an artist who has been working at this level for a sustained period.
Available through Creed Gallery, Ascot, for collectors across Berkshire, Surrey, and London.
