He tried to become so familiar with his equipment that using it became as automatic as driving a car

Kelley Walker

15 April 2001

Image

Scanned image, digital print on archival watercolour paper 42,1 x 69,5 cm. Exhibition copy KW-14 Courtesy: Paula Cooper Gallery, Nueva York

The two pieces selected for this exhibition consist of propaganda materials that have been manipulated with a view to destabilising their messages and relocating them in a different context. Here, the specific reference to capitalism has been turned into an even more direct and global reference affecting the social body as a whole under the paradigm of collapse. The area of colour that seems to extend is an ambiguous sign representing, in its indeterminacy, all the symptoms of a widespread illness or malaise. The image of destroyed roads and motorways, or of gigantic traffic jams, are some of the “idealised” depictions of the feared self-induced collapse we are negotiating with.