In a nod to his country’s political schizophrenia in the midst of the electoral campaign, Will Cotton offers a new take on the myth of the cowboy, symbolizing the conquest of the West. His large, ostensibly classical oil paintings portray a surprising encounter between triumphant cowboys and their fantastical steeds: pink unicorns.

The figure of the cowboy evokes a strong sense of American masculinity, associated with freedom, manifest destiny and a culture of violence. In contrast, the unicorn — particularly when pink — reminds us of a more contemporary mythology that has in recent years taken possession of the little girls’ section of toy and clothing departments everywhere. Questioning the notion of gender, the exhibition explores the relationship between the sexes along with the hyper-sexualisation of childhood, the notion of queer, and the LGBT movement, whose global mascot has recently become the rainbow unicorn.

The show features a group of oil paintings as well as new drawings in oil, sanguine and pencil inspired by his trips to Wyoming in the USA and Camargue in France. A variation on the cowboy-unicorn duo, these works on paper offer a humorous deconstruction of the question of representation.

In the world of Will Cotton, beautiful compositions and landscapes made of cascading sweet treats or mountains of meringue are not only an ode to the opulence of an idealised America or a lost paradise. They also mark a desire to question painting. His technically masterful style of painting explores the fluidity between different identities and cultural as well as artistic categories: popular icons versus classical painting, timeless myths versus advertising images.