In his paintings, Richard Phillips engages the complex web of human obsessions to do with sexuality, politics, power, death that are constantly exploited in mainstream media. Subjecting popular images to a range of classical painterly techniques, he estranges their familiarity and thus imbues them with new meaning. Photographic images of politicians are re-cast in neon, while supermodels are represented as academic paintings, as if to augment their status as pop icons. Over and over again throughout his work, the glossy idealism of advertising propaganda is subverted by his underlying resistance to its blatant seduction. Departing from the more photorealistic tendencies of recent years, in his newest works Phillips culls celebrity portraits, retro textbook illustrations, logos, and Op Art motifs to produce compressed images in an electric palette. Richard Phillips at Gagosian Athens will be on view until August 1, 2015, 3 Merlin Street Athens 10671