Tyler Shields’ Rolls Royce (2015, Archival Pigment Print) is one of the artist’s most iconic and audacious images, epitomizing his fascination with destruction, excess, and spectacle. In this explosive composition, a Rolls Royce sits beneath a massive fireball, the luxury vehicle dwarfed by the ferocious bloom of flames erupting into the desert sky. The work is both cinematic and visceral, collapsing the aesthetics of Hollywood action into the provocative framework of contemporary art.

By staging the destruction of such an emblem of wealth and status, Shields confronts the viewer with the fragility of material power and the absurdity of excess. The Rolls Royce, long a symbol of prestige and permanence, is here consumed by chaos, rendered momentary and fleeting. The fiery explosion becomes a metaphor for the volatility of desire and the extremes of cultural obsession with spectacle.

Rolls Royce underscores Shields’ reputation as a provocateur: an artist unafraid to court controversy in pursuit of imagery that is both beautiful and unsettling. It is a visual statement about luxury, mortality, and the seduction of destruction, cementing its place as a hallmark of Shields’ boundary-pushing oeuvre.

Chromogenic print
18 x 18 inches