ALL YOUR DREAMS BELONG TO US

LOCATION:

Chelsea. NYC.

DATE:

September. 2009

Life is full of contradictions, it keeps things interesting, certain people try to live out their lives through products and brands, it's accepted in our society that shopping is a hobby and wearing brands depicts you're of a certain stature, class or your desire to express your mind set and beliefs.

I've never said don't buy this brand or wear don't wear a label because I drink Coke, I wear Nike and I don't live in a Kabutz and pretend I'm world conscious, knowing, secretly that all along my millionaire parents are there to bail me out, as and when needed, but if there's an alternative it should be considered, I think people are now aware (read wary) of these super brands, the times are a changing, the tables turning, there is a return to the artisan and hand made, the under dog is rising. My work has always been about that, pause, that subversive intermission from the media saturated environment that surrounds us, I always saw the work I was putting up in the street as a break to to the advertising bombardment, all I aimed to do is get people to consider an alternative or look at the brands that surround us with different eyes. The billboard liberations I've created are my most direct way of instigating this.

Living in any city is inspirational, from the overlaid torn flyposters, to the tagged rusty metal door, or the jammed rotating billboard displaying parts of 3 different adverts at the same time, the chopping of music through different car stereos as I cycle through traffic on a hot day, to the new music I search out to listen to when I'm working the long hours in my studio. I don't really look for inspiration but am drawn to things naturally, allot of elements from my childhood and teenage years still have a huge influence in my work, not directly as such but more mentally, the mindset and DIY mentality that accompanies skateboarding and the grunge music I was into as a teenager, the comics I read, these things inspire me daily. It was this that brought me round to think about the mental filters we have from the constant barrage of information that surrounds us, particularly those of us that live in a city, how much of that information we consciously or subconsciously retain, over the course of a journey, whether thats a daily journey to and from work or a lifetime journey. How does this shape and form us? I've become fascinated with our appetite for the new and more, it seems we cannot digest enough information & imagery with the rise of the internet, which is now the core staple of our visual diet. It seems what would once have lasted a lifetime, now mearly serves as a blog post, relegated to the next page in a matter of hours, I realise that I'm as much a part of this, I like the change of pace, the virtual appetite, but equally I like the well thumbed hardcopy that lasts a lifetime and gets handed down to future generations.

It was this that inspired me to produce my next body of work that would be shown at my solo show at Jonathan Levine Gallery, New York.

Taking the core basis for the work from the rotating cube in my show aPOPcalypse Now, I turned the visual volume up, to portray this sensory overload, filtering and the results thereof, that have occurred in my life. Like a DJ mixes beats and samples, both recognisable, long forgotten and bespoke to create something new, with this body of work I mixed imagery that has become accepted in our visual world along with elements specific to my inspiration and those that don't exist and I created a fresh, splicing them together so that whilst the individual elements may be recognisable and apparent, the complete picture is something new.

The completed paintings were given 6 coats of high gloss varnish, giving them an artificial Glazed appearance, like a visual pill making them easy to swallow. I always try to produce an installation specific to each show, something that can't be experienced fully unless you attend the show in person. The center piece for this show, would be painting the entire space black and incorporating the walls and floor with a giant spiral, sucking the work off the walls and into the center, where I sunk a fake eye into the floor, acting as the focal point of the show.