Description
The line between the sacred and the primal, the regal and the brutal is captured in brilliant Technicolour in Johnny Romeo’s work Saint Hoot Brute. In the painting, a young Napoleonic figure is shown looking off in the distance, his regal expression ruptured by jagged shards inspired by the bold Cubist forms of Fernand Léger and the garish geometric designs of the New Romantics. There is an air of the beatific to Romeo’s commander figure as he stands resolutely, bathed in exuberant, candy- coloured hues that recall liturgical stained-glass windows. Romeo cleverly plays with this notion of sanctity and heaven further through the title Saint Hoot Brute, and the allusions to flight and heavenly bodies in the word assemblage ‘Soar’. At the same time, even saints can have a wilder, more ruthless side, a point reflected in the titular ‘Brute’ and the bizarre Cubist fragments that threaten to engulf the commander’s face. The reference to man’s more base nature, where the piousness of silence gives way to primitive howls, is captured in the slyly concealed text passage ‘Uproar’ and the cheeky ‘hoot’ of the title.
