TO PUT IT ANOTHER WAY, in a general sense, my use of paint and color in works is a kind of process of dosage, a pharmaceutical or chemical application. The paint can be compositionally balanced, using sets of complementary colors, rhythmic strokes, or it can be on either end of a spectrum of dosage: a stray mark, a trace amount, or on the other hand, an overdose, an overload of colors and paint until the surface barely exists. The usage of paint in this way references the origins of the word "pharmaceutical" in the Greek word pharmakon, which meant a chemical substance that was inherently double-sided, that revolved around a level of dosage. It meant both cure and poison because it could be either depending on the application. Interestingly, pharmakon also meant paint or makeup, which suggests a different kind of application, one with a visual element. Techniques of paint production relate to pharmaceutical creation - originating in substances from nature, often crushed or ground, mixed with a medium or delivery mechanism, and applied to a body (either literally or canvas). Now both paint and pharmaceuticals are produced via chemical industrial processes, synthesized, manufactured. (Canvas itself has a material, psychotropic connection, in that it has been suggested that its etymological origins lie in the ancient Greek word for “made of hemp,” or cannabis).
My use of paint as a stand-in for a chemical/cultural process of dosage uses different kinds of paint to play with different mechanisms of dosage. On a magazine page, for instance, spray paint provides a particularly "molecular" quality, with offspray making miniscule marks, a gradation based on distance and application. Similarly, it both sits on top of the paper beautifully and soaks into it slightly, providing a tactile sense of physical/chemical interaction, as well as offering a combination of bright bursts of color and more hazy overlays, depending on how it is applied. Oil paint, as its name would suggest, is much greasier, and thus soaks in immediately, leaving an obvious oil stain, as well as sitting, almost cloyingly, on the surface. Latex paint and acrylic have a more plastic-y, wetter quality, often wrinkling the paper. It is important that no matter what the medium of paint used, that the clean, mass-reproduced page is soiled, interrupted, both chemically to the page and visually on the surface of the page. The materiality of the page is crucial - it is disposable, printed on thin, inexpensive paper (or in the case of television or web ads, images that flip by and disappear), it is inherently non-archival. There is inherent temporality and planned obsolescence to these images in a way that is profoundly different from photographs or other graphic design.
The use of a magazine or newspaper page instead of a "blank" page as a canvas relates not only to the materiality of the paper, but to the image that is printed on it. The act of painting over an image, while simple, and long a device of art used by many (see, Picasso, Duchamp, Baldessari, Kelley, Genzken, Franz West), is remarkably powerful and effective. Even as it obliterates an image, it draws attention to what is covered and what remains visible. The application of an abstracted series of colors, besides producing effects of visual beauty or discord, when overlaid on an image creates a layer of meaning
both above and below. The "chemical" nature of the paint is applied to something, the dosage is given to something or someone. The something becomes apparent in my selection of advertisements, and as I direct the content towards pharmaceutical companies, banks and investment firms, and various commodity (fashion, automobiles, intoxicants) items, the relationship is drawn tighter between the paint and the underlying image. Depending on the composition, commentary may be assumed - of critique, mockery, or disdain on the one hand, or glorification, honoring, and approval on the other. Or the vagueness may imply both and neither at the same time. Just as chemicals, the pharmakon, is both inherently good and bad, a cure and a poison, so is paint, and so are the mechanisms and commodities of capitalism. In T. J. Jackson Lears' book Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America, he notes a presentation by the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency in 1925, in which the claim was made, "advertising is a non-moral force, like electricity, which not only illuminates but electrocutes. Its worth to civilization depends on how it is used." Such a claim, while perhaps suspect in itself, in certain ways is just as true as the double-sided aspect of any pharmaceutical or chemical.
This ambiguity and inherent multiplicity of possibilities in the act of dosage is a way of refusing to be directly critical or celebratory, and to allow elements of both to slip in. Such a refusal for criticality helps to potentially deflect some of the recuperative aspects of capitalism. While I am well aware of the intended final position of my artworks (as a luxury commodity in themselves), if they were purely critical or laudatory, their recuperation into the capitalist system would be more problematic, their effect derailed. Instead I hope they may exist in the future as a marker, a relic, and as an anthropological artifact, pointing to a time and space in the capitalist culture. The act of marking up these ads (in certain situations, such as the Self-Portrait series, a literal "de-facing") inserts the hand into the clean surface of capital, and the gesture allows the finger to point and draw attention to, but does not necessarily wag the finger (in a way that some otherwise admirable "overtly political" art can do).
On the other hand, stepping back from the content of the image and text of the advertisement, one can look at the "content" of the painting to occur on top. This replicates the very function of the advertisement in the first place as the originary source that drives the content surrounding it. T. J. Jackson Lears also writes of the Congressional testimony of an advertising executive named James Collins in 1907, who said "There is still an illusion to the effect that a magazine is a periodical in which advertising is incidental. But we don't look at it that way. A magazine is simply a device to induce people to read advertising." I would argue that in many cases the ads ARE the content in a magazine or television show, that the sitcom or the news or entertainment magazine that is "financed" and exists due to these ads are the "excuse" by which the ad exists in the first place. In certain cases an ad has a more lasting impact than the show one is watching or the magazine or webpage one is reading, as it may produce further action/effect upon your life (a purchase or decision) while the show itself may be forgotten. (Hence the smooth power and subtle pleasure of the premium cable shows on HBO or Showtime, which are surrounded by commercials but exist intact, commercial free. Even network shows watched on DVD are built around breaks, fade ins- and outs, cuts, that mark the 3 times-per-half-hour break in a show and determine the rhythm and pacing. This can easily be seen in the comparison of watching a film which originally existed commercial free, and then watching a version on television, interrupted constantly by commercials. The "content" is radically changed.) And yet, the ephemerality of the ad, its cheap printing or quick placement on television, makes it instantly degraded. It fades, it yellows, it disappears, it is thrown in the trash. Once its work of dissemination and presentation is done, its work is done.
The ad in this sense is the "real" content, the real driver here, and the news, the fashion, the information, entertainment, and editorials are mere byproducts, "brought to you by JP Morgan Chase". Even more pointed is when the ads are selling the very thing being explained/noted in the show - when financial companies support the newspaper writing about the economic meltdown, when banks advertise in the business pages as their practices are critiqued or applauded, as pharmaceutical companies advertise their new product even as the last one's recall is being noted. I use these pages from periodicals, literally ripping (almost never slicing, but viscerally tearing, a violent and speedy gesture) from their context. They are removed from their "circulation," thus echoing an interruption of a body's circulation of chemicals and circulations of capital.
My interest in advertising, including magazine and television ads, follows a long trajectory of artists who have worked in advertising (Stuart Davis, Rene Magritte, Joseph Cornell, Andy Warhol), and artists that have used ads as a medium, including Dan Graham and Lynda Benglis. John Knight's The Journals Project is also a significant touchstone work, as is Barbara Kruger's body of work which has a visual and formal derivation in her design work for Condé Nast Publications.
One of my arguments is that at this point we are all engaged with a constant and daily process of self-dosage. This is not only literal in the sense of a culture which is using more and more pharmaceuticals, but also in an expanded sense including food, television, information, and experiences. We are also being told that all of these options have a chemical component, of satisfying needs of brain activity or impacting our DNA. We have an ever-widening selection of opportunities before us, a cornucopia of almost limitless options and yet we are charged with cultural prescriptions for moderation even as we are egged on to consume more. We are given a credit card and told to spend responsibly, given alcohol and told to drink responsibly, given television and warned not to be couch potatoes. Being told to sip from the firehose is a curious situation to be in, particularly as we are being generally encouraged to police our own selves and our own behavior. It is all a matter of dosage, is the message; too little and one is denying oneself pleasure, disconnected from society, culturally illiterate; too much and one is self-destructive, irresponsible, overindulgent.
In the end, these ads, these direct lubricants of capitalism, which exist in a cycle of speed, ephemerality, repetition, violence, and communication, are ripped from their context and altered, interrupted by my own cycles of speed, ephemerality, repetition, violence, and communication. Their interaction with me is the same as any other viewer of the ad, but I return the gesture back upon it, complicating, questioning, and diagnosing. There is a kind of collision between culture, the corporeal, the chemical, and capital.