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ArtEvol 2025 / James D. Hopkins
BOTCH , 2025 Oil paint, acrylic paint, acrylic pen on canvas 44 × 70 cm
James D. Hopkins is a London-based artist whose work has been shown across the United Kingdom as well as in Madrid, New York and Florida.
Hopkins’s practice investigates the asymmetrical and the absurd, engaging with cultish iconography and performative combat. Drawing on the saturation of online media, Hopkins transforms material into grotesque assemblages that combine humour with an undertone of dread. Paintings, characters and installations present aesthetics that are alarming, nostalgic, repetitive and unsettling, often grounded in the notion of Kayfabe, the wrestling term for staged events performed as real. Hopkins works across painting, performance, video, sculpture and installation, frequently merging media in single projects. An alter ego, Deadboy the Kid, is part of DANK Collective (D1337), a London-based group focusing on the absurdity, humour and violence of post-irony culture.
Artwork Introduction
BOTCH is from a series of paintings exploring the concept of a ‘botch’, a term from professional wrestling describing a manoeuvre gone wrong due to injury, mistake or a break within the illusion. Each painting undergoes many transformations, pushed and pulled through human and machine hands with the aid or detriment of a pen plotter. Each work begins as crude drawings from life that go through metamorphosis in digital programmes such as Photoshop, Illustrator and Blender until figures and shapes emerge. The paintings are placed on the plotter to be continued by the machine. 3D-printed brush holders allow various brushes and pens to trace outlines or fill, varying in thickness, consistency and flow. The pen plotter acts as a partner. Mistakes (botches) arise and are embraced, emphasised by ghostly professional wrestler figures. The work explores the in-between space, balancing tension as canvases cycle in and out until a decision is reached or arguably made by the machine. The outcomes reside in the uncanny valley, between human and machine.
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