Enigmatic Iconography and Incomplete Narratives Merge in Phlegm’s Murals and Engravings

In his characteristically illustrative, enigmatic style, Phlegm’s monochrome compositions evoke wonder, mischief, and riddles. Hybrid figures, strange interactions, and uncanny combinations of objects fill his idosyncratic murals, about which we can only speculate the meaning. “I think a lot about the barriers between people understanding each other, and I think I enjoy making artwork that floats in some grey area,” the London-based artist tells Colossal.

The past several years have been dominated by a fascination with copper engraving, “to the point where I pretty much stopped painting murals,” Phlegm says. He’s spent much of the time in an almost monastic reverence to printmaking techniques of the Northern Renaissance, initially delving into the work of a group of German printmakers known as The Little Masters, who practiced their craft on minuscule surfaces just an inch or two across.

Phlegm then embarked on an ambitious completist project focused exclusively on Albrecht Dürer’s “Knight, Death, and the Devil,” which he created in 1513 and incorporated a wealth of iconography, the meaning of which is still debated by art historians today. “I spent a great deal of time collecting old copies of it, studying it under a microscope, and figuring out how the image was created,” the artist says. “The last two years, I’ve been engraving my own version where I’ve replaced everything for my own but tried to stay true to the line work and layout of the composition.”

In what may seem to be in total opposition to the broad strokes required to paint a mural several stories high, engraving requires painstaking attention to detail. But as he returns to mural-making, Phlegm revisits themes that crop up regularly in his work, from folk law and ritual to prehistory and archaeology.

“I think in my work, I’ve always loved telling broken stories that can land as either dark or light— narratives that feel hard to read clearly,” he says. With archaeology, for instance, “you can piece together tangible parts of a story and get glimpses of moments from the past, but it’s often broken or without context. I’m very drawn to this feeling.”

The idea of honesty in art is not a new one, but discussion of its role has emerged with more gusto in the era of the internet, social media, and generative AI. Phlegm describes his approach as one centered around honesty, which might be further defined in terms of candidness, sincerity, and attention to detail. His cryptic works appear to possess a narrative, but what that is, we’re never totally sure. But that’s the point. “I often meticulously work out their history and intricate stories only to leave out large chunks,” the artist says.

In designing a mural, he might write an entire story and format a set of frames like one might find in a comic book, but only a fragment of this tale gets translated onto a wall. “It helps me make something that feels authentic and stops me approaching the space with a mindset tainted by trying to make something look good,” he says. “Looking good tends to come secondary to the storytelling.” Nevertheless, having focused for a time on very intricate, small-scale work, his approach to large-scale murals has become what he describes as more fluid and confident.

See more on the Phlegm’s Instagram, and you can also stay updated via his Substack.

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