ARTIST STATEMENT
The body of work I am currently developing investigates the socioeconomic friction between the manufactured 'Sold Dream' pushed by American advertising and the visceral, often invisible labor that sustains it. Utilizing a dual-sided, sculptural approach both within the series’ surfaces and through the painting of re-worked advertisements I am exploring the 'proximity of control' held by those exerting self-serving influence. Represented by the cold syntax of design and the communicated imagery itself, I trace how this power dictates an unequal exposure to the psychological and financial consequences borne by the individual experiencing them.
My current practice employs a front to back visualization to map the colonization of the human psyche from these advertisements and ever increasing cultural norms of vanity and optimization of the mental and physical. On the front or primary surface, I render a dreamscape painting of service workers captured in a fugue state of industrial labor, such as casino workers, security guards, restaurant workers in the act of working or also in moments of rest from their job, drawing inspiration from scenes of my personal experiences in these positions. These figures are painted directly over a substrate of collaged advertisements, allowing the high contrast imagery of corporate power to “ghost” through parts of the figures and the scene itself.
The reverse side of each of these pieces are meant to function as the dead reality of this system. Abandoning the human touch of paint or mark making for a purely abstract collage of shredded, found advertisements. By stripping this “sold” reality of optimization of its narrative and context, reducing it to its raw, industrial waste, I want to reveal that the power of this idea is a hollow abstraction only held together by the tangible weight of consequence from the human labor shown in the front painting. This 360 navigation forces the viewer to physically step behind the curtain of the “curated aspiration" and to see what supports and also leads to the erosion of this manufactured ideology of perverse profitable convenience.
Expanding the same critique into pharmaceutical and telehealth industries I am developing a series of satirical ad recreations that target the predatory manufacturing of vanity and sense of self. By hand painting mimicked ads from GLP-1, ED, hairloss etc brands with taglines that are altered to emphasize the predatory nature of these advertisements that come across as normal, acceptable and digested. I want to confront the dystopic optimism that masks an erosion of the self.
Ultimately, my work serves as a broader critique of the systematic structures within American society that insulate influence while offloading the risk. By highlighting this disparity, I want to engage in a larger conversation about the architecture of our society, a system where those with the greatest proximity to power and influence remain shielded from the damaging effects of their decisions, while those on the periphery face an unequal exposure to the consequence of those actions and results of that influence. Through these mixed media objects and paintings I am trying to not only document a moment or example of that experience but to create in aggregate a visual representation of this system as a whole.
1995
Born in Philadelphia, living in New York, NY
