SARDINE & TOBLERONI

Sardine & Tobleroni, the stage name for Swiss/Portuguese punk rock painters Jay Rechsteiner and Victa Silveira are my official New Art Crush. Infusing cultish rock n roll imagery with a naive, loose style, their paintings evoke a nostalgic teenage charm - the kind usually reflected on the folders of high school punk rebels across the western world.

The duo categorise their practice as 'Conceptual Art Brut', suggesting a body of work wishing to remain uninstitutionalised. This 'outsider' status is again reflected in Sardine & Tobleroni's refreshingly humble conception at the Hackney Community College, as opposed to say, Goldsmiths or the Royal College of Art. Amongst video pieces and photography, their main wheeze is to each paint one side of a canvas, resulting in schizophrenic portraits revealing Tobleroni's more experimental, abstract tendencies against Sardine's figurative approach. The punk artists have also managed to make Gilbert and George's vile 'In The Piss' palatable by reappropriating the work into a comedic egotistical pastiche of the Self-Referential Old Boys' grotesque brazen nakedness.

Sardine & Tobleroni's first solo show entitled 'We Love 77' featured a scorching collection of 77 bands in 77 paintings ironically not just limited to the seminal Year Of Punk. Straight up unaffected idolatry, or a sophisticated reimagining of decades of pop cultural history? Whatever the case, these works remain a stunning collection of images exuding all the brooding anger of youth and the vigorous passion we invest in our rock n roll heroes.

All images courtesy of Google