Artschwager rarely painted from real life, constructing imagery instead from memory, or using photographs and newspaper images enlarged to the size of easel paintings as the basis of his work, as in Generation IV, (2003). The magnification of the photographs, combined with the highly textured surfaces, cause the images to appear grainy and blurred, rendering the characters unrecognizable, yet retaining a heavy, sculptural quality. The grisaille techniques deployed in portraits such as Was me (2008) and Sixty + (2008) also work to invoke a photorealist aesthetic, prompting a non-subjective, and more object-like way of approaching the painting and the figure depicted. In other paintings, Artschwager incorporates vivid colours, as seen in Mr. Bridge (2009), featuring a deep purple backdrop which lends a surreal, dreamlike quality to the composition. Similarly, Group Portrait (2012), is executed in pink and yellow, and features a staged arrangement of static characters in an imagined situation.

Artschwager used the form of portraiture to explore and understand the human condition. While the theme of domesticity runs through the artist’s work, evident in Artschwager’s early forms which appropriate domestic objects such as tables, chairs, lecterns and mirrors, the portraits on show reveal a shift in focus from the interior of the domestic space, to the interiority of people. The disconcerting perspectives and scales deployed in these compositions give the work a dissonance. In Self Portrait with Green Background, (2009) the figure seems energized by the rich green background, a colour of renewal, yet a sense of melancholy pervades the image, the face appearing empty and grey. The haziness of the image functions as a mask, a means by which to maintain distance, and infuses the grisaille paintings with ambiguity.

Also on display in the gallery will be Exclamation Point (Orange) (2010), a sculptural punctuation mark rendered from plastic bristles attached to a mahogany core. In both name and form, Exclamation Point is a playful example of the artist's semiotic experimentation in the realm of art. The punctuation piece inflects the gallery space in the same way that punctuation inflects written language, engaging the other works in the exhibition and underlining and questioning the institutional context of art. Aesthetically, the exclamation point was one of Artschwager’s favoured punctuation marks; 'I would call this the 'prince of punctuation'. Spiralling free but gravity-aware. Hopping on one foot like Mother Brown. Can operate with respect to itself or anybody/thing around'.