Edel Assanti presented Vienna-based artist Simon Lehner’s first UK solo exhibition, Of Peasants & Basterds.

Working across sculpture, painting and installation, Simon Lehner’s practice interrogates the relationship between the image-onslaught of the information age and psychic inner life. Lehner’s research probes algorithm-accelerated echo chambers as they evolve into mainstream social doctrines.

Of Peasants & Basterds introduced its theme with a sculpture of the word Community, 3D-printed and dripping with silicon. This word resonates squeamishly with a generation who were spoon-fed utopian visions of a diverse, borderless community interconnected by benevolent Tech Giants. As a harbinger of societal polarisation unleashed by this revolution, the sculpture is irony-laden; a relic of vacuous corporate advertising, dissolving into oblivion.

Lehner’s interest in internet subcultures first emerged from a desire to come to terms with his own psychology and childhood experiences. His enquiry addresses the construction of identity occurring in these spaces: unattainable ideals are magnified; individuals are marginalised from the group; alternative communities are formed, grounded in a reversal of the proscribed value system.

Lehner’s focus on groups that proliferate toxic ideals of hyper-masculinity is a case-study in the weaponisation of images, and the power imbalance between the individual and the technologies that now drive collective consciousness. Of Peasants & Basterds expands Lehner’s inquiry into the role of pictures as instruments of manipulation, beginning with a reference to the history of painting. From the 16th to19th centuries, “peasant paintings” were commissioned by the ruling class as a pre-photographic means of visualising the lives of ordinary people. Lehner’s most recent work observes that today’s kings are a coterie of male tech CEOs, whose surveillance tools amass an infinite datascape representative of our collective psyche; in this analogy, the peasants are their users.

Lehner’s new works pivot on compositions derived from historical paintings, supplanting peasants with avatars summoned from the depths of the manosphere. In this world, Patrick Bateman – a regularly transmutating protagonist in Lehner’s oeuvre, seeded from Christian Bale’s portrayal of the character in American Psycho – is an aspirational male archetype, both aesthetically and behaviourally. Bateman’s character has evolved from an internet meme into a symbol and role model within the incel communities, embodying their ideals of how a man should treat women and navigate the world around him. Members of these online subcultures not only strive to physically resemble him, but also to adopt his behavioural traits – embracing stoic character ideals and, often, misogynistic perspectives.

An animatronic humanoid sculpture inhabited the middle of the exhibition subtly breathing as it presses its face up against the wall. Sitting on a prison cell chair whilst peering through a keyhole, its silicone body is marked up, annotated with cosmetic corrections as though prepped for plastic surgery. This uncanny individual is what Lehner refers to as an “Image Basterd”: a product of image indoctrination; a member of a different kind of community to the one we were promised, in which radicalised young men coalesce in celebration of misogyny and violence. Self-image is submitted to communal critique in forums where consensus is driven by a stream of idealised masculine icons.

Lehner’s series of paintings are made through a unique process developed by the artist: compositions are created using thousands of images aggregated from both Lehner’s private and collective archives to construct interactive 3D digital spaces populated by avatars. Within these environments, the artist assumes a puppeteer role, limitlessly manipulating his characters and props before translating them into films, animatronic sculptures or paintings. The paintings materialise Lehner’s scenes through a collaboration with an adapted robotic router, carving out a topographic surface disrupted by painterly gestures where the artist’s hand and the machine’s meet. Emblematic of the technological era in which they are made, the sophisticated layering of Lehner’s paintings complicate our ability to distinguish depth and authorship, real from simulation, truth from falsehood.