Advertising Quiz and The Meta

Here I go again with my art jargon contributions... but a few pieces call into conversation much of what we've been reading, and I think you might find two artists particularly of interest. (If any of you are familiar with these works already, please excuse my overly simplistic explanation.)

Louis Cameron relates most to Smythe's article about the content of culture serving the realm of advertising. Cameron makes a lot of work that first looks like it might be abstract expressionism, but on closer examination, his subject is that of commercial marketing.

Basically, the artist takes brands or pairings of pantone colors and turns them into art that summons our unconscious associations with those products he references. See how quickly you can identify the images I've imbedded here... of course, some are more obvious than others. I've given the "answers" at the bottom of this post, so try to figure them out first before scrolling if you don't want to be a cheater.

What I find interesting is that the decoding of these works summons the products we're all so intimately familiar with - so much so that we don't need to see what they look like, because they're already embedded in visual memory.

For more of these, check out the artist's site; it's all Flashed out, so I can't grab some of the better imagery for this blog post. Identifying and examining the forms that he uses for these different commodities (many of which have to do with the act of consumption itself) is a fun game to play with yourself.
Try it at: http://www.louiscameron.com



The other piece I continue to think of in this reoccurring conversation about relationships between base/superstructure - perhaps in a more abstract sense - is Pierre Huyghe's film "The Third Memory." Maybe it's just that I recently found this work and have become unabashedly obsessed with it, but it seems that the piece calls into question what happens to a film and it's makers after it's become an economically viable, recognizable cultural product. And talk about issues of mediation. The video is almost 10 minutes long, so I won't harp on this; basically all you need to know is that the man speaking is the "real" robber that Al Pacino played in Dog Day Afternoon. To watch the film (pre-apology for the quality), go to: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3izfb_the-third-memory-huyghe_shortfilms For a more detailed reading of the film, see: http://www.artnet.com/Magazine/features/saltz/saltz2-14-01.asp


ANSWERS TO CAMERON: Snickers, American Express, Corona, Aquafresh, Mountain Dew, (installation: foreground) Doublemint, Orangina