TOWERS OF BABYLON
All art is reactionary. At the most basic level the artist serves the function of collecting external stimuli and filtering them into new creations. This may not always take the form of a handmade object, but the artist nonetheless deals in experiences - both their own and the ones they create for others. These drawings and paintings are results of individual experiences, but more importantly they are records of a certain point in our civilization.
That point, is the present world of globalized late-capitalism: the economic system that has risen exponentially since the late nineteenth century to utterly dominate the world's resources, and conditioned billions of newborns into repressed consumers. Several of these works were made before the current recession, and their warnings still pertain to our situation. The temporary credit errors of the capitalist system are no excuse to stop fighting its resultant stranglehold on human individuality.
The homogenization of culture that bridges continents is all the reminder we need of the dangers of fabricated consumer culture. Knowing no other means with which to interpret the world, the contemporary population buys into this system unquestioningly.
As early as 1903, Georg Simmel was fully aware of the detrimental effects that the fast-paced Metropolis had on its inhabitants; he wrote of the blase attitude, the decoloring power of money, and overload of stimulus that so characterizes Western culture today. These notions became pillars of thought for Modern life, embraced by the ever-expanding consumer economy. Art, in this case becomes a weapon with which to dislodge the viewer from the status quo. My sole intention here is for you to question the world that built these monolithic skyscrapers.
The fact that nearly all of these painted environments feature people was never intentional. We are a constant presence among the concrete grids; drifting in isolation down streets we built ourselves. The streets and towers seem attractive at times, belaying the realization of our own subjugation that we must someday come to face.
All images on this site are licensed by Benjamin Andrew under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.