Nothing for Sale

Using the visual languages of sales literature and advertisements this piece engages the viewer’s sense of commercialism. By placing text at multiple levels and skewing the baselines of each individual word, the piece becomes a moving and polysemous field where words can mingle with more than one meaning. The onlooker’s position and angle in relation to the field triggers certain words to come forward, either by their physical placement or by the temperature of the color which accompanies them. This allows the separate planes to intermingle. Much like rapidly passing billboards along a highway or advertisements placed on the outside of mass transit, this piece presents the viewer with a temporal impact. Unlike said advertisements, this piece is absent of the object of commercialism, making it less invasive to our sense of choice (to buy or not to buy) while still driving at our enculturated impulse to consume (in this case, the search for meaning.) For the viewers who do stop to view the piece, a reward of human flaw is revealed in the craftsmanship. The colors (primaries) and the style (text-based; futura font) appear to be born from a medium driven and advanced by machines, yet the painterly style of the lettering (blotchy coloring, uneven lines) connects the viewer to the artist as a hand-maker.