Hayden Kays is a London-based artist whose practice encompasses painting, sculpture and printmaking. He is widely described as one of the most provocative artists of his generation for his celebration and critique of the culture industry which demonstrates classically trained sensibilities mediated by thoroughly contemporary concerns.

Kays’ work is characterised by bold imagery, often drawn from popular culture and art history, acerbic word-play, traditional craftsmanship and deadpan humor. Using everyday references and pithy witticisms, his work relates to and subverts the canon of the Pop Artists of the 1950s and the Young British Artists movement of the 1990s.

Kays has been touted as the YBA’s heir for the street art generation, spearheading the evolution of the movement in the UK today. His hard-hitting messages, which blur the lines between capitalism and culture, human sensibility and the machine age, have caught the eye of patrons and supporters such as contemporary art bad boy Jake Chapman, who describes the artist’s practice as, “acerbic, witty, shallow and subversive… quite brilliant.”