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Ashby & Graff Real Estate

Ashby & Graff Real Estate

Los Angeles, California

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  • Artist: Richard Woods (English, b. 1966)

Richard Woods uses installations in cartoon colours to satirise the housing crisis. Leaning on his previous career as a builder, the artist transforms everyday surfaces into playful and exaggerated cartoon versions. This process involves overlapping objects with statement, painted-on textures. Much of this is done through woodblock printing, using household gloss paint and 3mm MDF boards. He has likened his bright palette to the plastic-like colours of his parents' garish 1970s decor. Often executed on his studio floor, he creates graphic textures such as bricks, stones and wood grain. Despite being known for architectural installations, Woods views his work “in terms of surfaces” rather than sculpting.

Through his installations, Woods highlights the housing crisis, multiple-home ownership and gentrification. By emblazoning building structures in his iconic cartoon style, Woods satirises the very idea of house ownership as an unreachable, animated fantasy. Removed from reality, they have no real windows, no glass, no accessible front doors. There is, “nothing else that would lead the viewer to think they could live in it.” They exist in a dreamlike state, outside of numerous people’s grasp.
Home Globe (Yellow) by Richard Woods, Image 2.
  • Richard Woods
  • Home Globe (Yellow), 2023
    • Glass globe surrounding a polystone resin house and artificial snow, mounted on a walnut wood base.
    6.3 x 5.5 x 5.5 in