Ashburry

Ashburry is a life-size figure constructed across two separate canvases through pasted paper, drawing, paint, abrasion, and handwritten notation. Goons approaches paper as a painterly material, using it not merely as collage, but as pigment, structure, ground, and skin. The figure is assembled rather than simply depicted, emerging from seams, tears, printed fragments, stains, and accumulated marks.

A vintage vinyl banner from a 1990s Olympic-era promotion forms part of the underlying surface. Portions of the original message—“WIN $100,000 EACH NIGHT”—remain visible, while the CBS and Coca-Cola logos appear faintly beneath the pasted and painted interventions. The banner retains traces of its former commercial life as it is absorbed into the private visual world of Goons.

Scrawled references to Germany recur across both canvases. “Germ” appears near Ashburry’s head, while “Germany” and a partially legible telephone number appear below. These fragments function less as explanation than as coordinates within Goons’ imagined geography: part memory, part fictional location, and part residue from the street.

Among Goons’ canvas works, Ashburry most closely preserves the energy of his San Francisco street practice. Its pasted surfaces, disrupted advertising, exposed seams, protruding thumbtacks, stains, and improvised marks recall a city wall repeatedly posted over, written upon, weathered, and reclaimed.

Strings hang freely from the lower canvas, introducing a handmade, bohemian quality and extending the figure beyond the conventional limits of the painted surface. Thumbtacks protrude around the edges of both canvases, creating an irregular, almost spiked perimeter.

Ashburry appears monumental yet vulnerable, comic yet strangely self-aware. He is not simply represented on the surface; he seems to have been assembled from it. Through this process of painting with paper, Goons transforms discarded public language into an individual presence—sentimental, unstable, and almost sentient.

Details

Artist: Goons
Title: Ashburry
Year: 2026
Medium: Found paper, vintage printed vinyl banner, acrylic, paint stick, marker, adhesive, thumbtacks, string, and mixed media on two canvases
Format: Two-panel life-size work
Top canvas: Approximately 36 × 48 inches, slightly larger overall where the thumbtacks protrude
Bottom canvas: 30 × 48 inches, excluding the hanging strings
Edition: Unique work, one of one
Sold as: One complete two-canvas artwork

Condition

The work contains exposed seams, folds, wrinkles, tears, drips, stains, protruding thumbtacks, hanging strings, and irregular pasted edges. These qualities are intentional and integral to the artwork. Paper, vinyl, adhesive, and other applied materials may continue to crease, lift, tear, fade, or change over time.