ALEX FOXTON: KNIGHT OF THE SORROWFUL COUNTENANCE

SALON 94 is pleased to present Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance, Alex Foxton’s first solo exhibition in NYC.

September 10 – November 01, 2025

Foxton’s new body of work tackles masculinity at a time when it is being overperformed and reduced to its most classical and rigid codes. Young, controlled bodies with strict demeanors confront us in large group compositions, while portraits of authority figures follow us with their cold gaze. While the artist continues to place primary importance on the physical body, he now approaches it more in relation to the group—to the way it is shaped by various social and political influences.

Here, Foxton approaches color through a positive-negative dynamic, concentrating its effects to arrest our gaze on these bodies that confront us as a solid mass. This limited color palette mirrors that of contemporary Western male attire, itself largely derived from military uniforms and the strict ‘‘black suit’’ of the 19th century.

He thus invokes Mishima and his private army, King Charles and Prince William, Donald J. Trump and Roy Cohn, as well as the matador Manolete. Alongside them appear anonymous male groups sharing the same rigidity—fascist armies or Eton students—as if the codes of masculinity could not escape their patriarchal display of violence and control.