2w05 “Branded and On Display,”

Hank Willis Thomas
"Branded Head," 2003
digital C-print mounted to Plexiglas
96 x 60"

Laurie Hogin
"New Colgate Luminous Enamel-Strengthening Cinnamint Toothpaste"
from "Allegory of Psychodemographics: Twenty-Four Brands My Family Uses in a Typical Summer Day," 2006
oil paint on panel
24 panels, each 11 x 14"

“ ‘Branded’ examines the work of artists who explore specific strategies of branding and presentation in their response to this pervasively commoditized environment.”

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — It’s no wonder Americans are heavily invested in a culture of consumption. As targets of ubiquitous corporate branding campaigns and marketing mania, we are bombarded 24/7 on all fronts – through every conceivable form of mass media and product packaging, at sporting and entertainment venues, and even lobbied by the apparel of friends and family.

The unified message conveyed by each of these delivery systems: Buy! Buy! Buy!

But not everyone is passively buying what’s being sold.

“Ours is a culture defined by marketing and acquiring,” Fox and Duggan observe in text from the catalog that accompanies the exhibition. “With one of our founding fathers – Thomas Jefferson – a compulsive shopper, this just may be part of being American. Virtually every activity in our lives is experienced through purchases, from bassinets to caskets. The landscape is studded with logos, brand names, and billboards – inducements to participate in a culture defined by the acquisition of commodities.

Reflection from PT1& FT presentation

After i chose the topic about Utopia &Consumer Age, i looked plenty of stuff related this topic. I was thinking about real,unreal, alter ego, second life...etc. However, i always have the problem to build up the project. The word like 'real/unreal', second life, illusion ... are too abstract for me. I don't know how to build my project from those worlds, so i was looking many information of those worlds. Then i start to more confuse.

However, PT 1& FT presentation gave me lots of help. I understand how they build up their project and how to research the project. I was thinking about my project based on my own experience before. But my experience is not too strong to support my project. Based on static and research report will be more strong. That is also the way i feel more comfortable to do the project.

2w04“consumption”

episode synopsis: “consumption”

"All of these artists reference the other kinds of images we are familiar with," writes Katy Siegel in her essay for the Art:21 Companion Book. "We spend our whole lives training to understand movies and television and video games and clothes and beds and houses. And so contemporary art often invokes these experiences and objects; art often looks like a commodity, because in a consumer culture, nothing could be more essential."

“Consumption” begins with an original work created by artist Barbara Kruger. Hosted by tennis star and sports commentator John McEnroe, the humorously frenetic video explores the ways in which people consume things in their daily lives, from food to money to sex. Throughout the video, Kruger's trademark phrases in red and white demand the attention and obedience of the viewer. Proclaiming "Love art, Buy art, Sell art," and "Feed me, Love me, Buy me, Sell me", Kruger's text addresses the viewer in much the same way advertisers sway a consumer to buy a product.

2w03 illusion-Cai Guo Qiang

"Illusion"
2004
3 channel video installation: DVD projectors, 3 DVD players, 6 x 24-foot screen, car, spent fireworks
Installation view: MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts
Collection of the Artist
Photo by Kevin Kennefick
Courtesy Cai Guo-Qiang

“The video piece…it happens—yet it looks back, right back into itself and it plays out again. The perspective of the camera is that of a pedestrian watching Times Square in all its glittery glory at night, pulsating with life—and seeing a car exploding through the streets as if it’s an illusion, as if it’s happened or maybe not happened.”
— Cai Guo-Qiang

2w02 some consumption projects from other artists

"Window Shopper"
2005
Mixed media collage on canvas, 48 x 60 inches
Courtesy Sikkema Jenkins & Co.

“The sheer density of advertising creates a psychic mass, an overlay that can sometimes be very tense or aggressive. The colors shift; the palette becomes very violent. If there’s a twenty- foot wall with one advertisement for a movie about war, then you have the repetition of the same image over and over—war, violence, explosions, things being blown apart. As a citizen, you have to participate in that every day. You have to walk by until it’s changed.”
— Mark Bradford

"The Curiosity Shop"
2005
Mixed media, 12 1/2 x 28 x 12 feet. Installation view: Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York. Private Collection, New York and Amsterdam
Courtesy Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York

“I’m constantly going to flea markets, yard sales, and junk stores and buying things specifically for projects, but also for myself and my friends. I try to keep these compartments stable but they tend to blur into one another, so an object may find its way into a work or into my private collections. I have very eccentric collections— oil cans, wooden mallets, stuffed birds, cabinet cards, photographs of boats and animals in zoos, and just dozens and dozens of things. It’s a way to continually be engaged with my work. Some artists paint, some sculpt, some take photographs, and I shop. That’s what I do.”
— Mark Dion


“Falling Bough”
2002
Watercolor, gouache, ink and pencil on paper, 60 3/4 x 119 1/2 inches
Private collection, Tennessee
Courtesy Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York

“The passenger pigeons were the most numerous birds that ever lived in the history of the planet. It’s almost disturbing how numerous—billions upon billions of birds. It was a fecundity that was almost disgusting. I started thinking about a blame-the-victim kind of attitude you could take to that…to make it seem like they had it coming, that there was this disgusting empire of birds and that it was corrupt like Rome…that it was bound to fall. So I invest the passenger pigeons with every kind of sin that I can imagine. And the bough, this gigantic branch, is falling under their tremendous weight. Meanwhile they go about their bickering and their lusts and foibles and all the disgusting things that they are doing.”
— Walton Ford

"eXelento"
2004
Plasticine, ink and paper on canvas, 96 x 192 inches
The Eli Broad Family Foundation, Santa Monica, CA
Photo by Robert McKeever
Courtesy Gagosian Gallery, New York

“I’ve collected archival material from black photo journals from 1939 to 1972, looking at magazines like ‘Our World,’ ‘Sepia,’ and ‘Ebony.’ Initially I was attracted to the magazines because the wig advertisements had a grid-like structure that interested me. But as I began looking through them, the wig ads themselves had such a language to them—so worldly—that referred to other countries, La Sheba…this sort of lost past.”
— Ellen Gallagher

2w01 An exhibition 失重 Urban Culture ,the Flourish & Corrupted

An exhibition 失重 Urban Culture ,the Flourish & Corrupted