Artist Richard Hawkins dissects the enchantment of the ‘web boyfriend’

Richard Hawkins operates as a fan, data he presents throughout a walkthrough of his newest present – ‘Potentialities’ at Kunsthalle Wien in Vienna – offering a window right into a observe that has lengthy engaged with the pleasure of trying and the dynamics of need, typically in tandem with popular culture, regularly targeting the heartthrob. Preoccupied with Teen Beat journal in his adolescence, most lately the American artist has discovered topics in so-called web boyfriends: actors Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor seem in his 2025 works All Palms on D*ck and Dandy Floriculturists, respectively, whereas Adam Driver’s likeness options in Softly but Weirdly Methods (2020). Justin Bieber, Timothée Chalamet and Jack O’Connell are different current protagonists, and every is current in some type in Vienna.

‘There’s an impulse that is most likely inexplicable at first, this space of fascination, then I begin studying all the pieces I can, questioning if these preliminary impulses are defined,’ says Hawkins, reflecting on the obsessive enquiries that form his work. ‘A part of it is not realizing – as soon as I’ve realised what the attraction is, if it may be discovered, it turns into much less of a thriller. Holding it open and spectral even, is a part of the enjoyable.’

Half of a bigger group of works on canvas (‘They’ve by no means been all collectively,’ notes the artist, ‘in order that was a form of dream’), the work are brightly colored, some with strains of poetry woven across the figures (often depicted solely from the shoulders up), many with marks that from afar (or as seen on a display) learn nearly as felt tip pen, a playful aesthetic that speaks to the younger Hawkins whose curiosity was confined to periodicals. At the moment, he’s invariably on-line – a proponent of AI, whose analysis embraces OnlyFans as a lot as TikTok or YouTube.

Persevering with by means of 6 April 2026, earlier than shifting to Hannover’s Kestner Gesellschaft, ‘Potentialities’ is Hawkins’ first institutional present in over a decade (and his most substantial so far), and is comprised of greater than 100 items made between 2011 and 2025, grouped into 9 distinct our bodies of labor. In addition to work, a number of of the artist’s collages, for which he’s maybe greatest recognized and which are inclined to information his wider engagement with areas of non-public curiosity, additionally characteristic, whereas sculpture and video are represented too; the final bookends the present, with Cheerful and Scary movie compilations, made between 2023 and 2025, hosted in rooms at both finish of the house.

Stretching his interpretation of and ongoing examine into fandom and obsession are three our bodies of labor, made between 2012 and 2025, that immediately reference different artistic figures. Bodily positioned close by each other however with visually contrasting attributes, works concerning the Japanese choreographer Tatsumi Hijikata, the French author Antonin Artaud, and the American painter Forest Bess showcase this different thread, by which Hawkins reconsiders their narratives. ‘I am making an attempt to recreate issues, or re-manifest the intent of the unique,’ he explains, alluding to his reinterpretations, just like the Ankoku collages from 2012, which riff on the choreographer’s personal scrapbooks (the Bess works, furthermore, which noticed him cross-reference Bess’ personal lexicon of symbols and color codes with archives of surviving correspondence, are merely titled The Forrest Bess Variations). ‘I at all times contemplate these collaborations,’ he continues. ‘Perhaps not Artaud, he was a bit tougher.’