ARTWORK > censortisements

For the last couple of years I have been using images from magazines and advertisements as materials for my work, and I have investigated and experimented with their use of text and imagery. However my intent is not to celebrate their existence, but rather to take advantage of them in creating my visual speculations.
For this project I decided to pick a number of magazine advertisements and force them to change into something else, something humorous, self-contradictory and useless to the commercial world. I decided to Un-employ them, and by covering all visual information they contain to completely censor their initial messages, hence the title of the project: CENSORTISEMENTS.
The resulting images become more or less ambiguous compositions of odd shapes and forms, quiet and mysterious, they oppose the loud nature of advertising and cease to transmit any relevant information. Instead of telling us what to buy, or what we need to be and how, there is a shift of power that occurs and the advertisements become the targets or the victims, if you will, they are now told what and how to be. No longer expressing their initial ideas and no longer promoting other objects, they turn into silent representations of themselves.

Censortisement #1006
Censortisement #1006
paint-covered magazine ad
8x10
2010