Wayne Coe
Statement
I began painting with historical paintings of contemporary events, truths I read about but for which there were no images. A lenticular: an office, ascending business graph and happy coworkers/a plane tearing through the office, gotterdamerung, SMASH/back to peaceful office. POP art forms are designed to communicate institutional messages but can be reengineered to deliver truths about corporate corruption. A notional artists, my journalistic research and interdisciplinary work seek deliver messages forbidden in Western media. I’m interested in the media bubble as form & filter.
Marketing forms are reality-altering forms. What is real when everything we know is delivered by state controlled media? When “progressives” are pro-war, and cultural inclusion is being outlawed we’re in a totalitarian moment. My art reflects my awareness of control. Brand PR is todays News. Advertising commodifies the horrific and humdrum for passive consumption, the Marvel Universe. The Iraq war instant Classic!
Methodology of instant NFT masterpieces is my consideration. The graphic design of denial & false narratives. The “true story” in my works is applied not to huckstering plastic toys, or spectacles but to communicating existential truths media suppresses, the Howard Zinn universe, the POV where guard dogs have more rights than humans in cages. Capitalist packaging eradicates most content.
To 99.9% of the world, 9/11 was a hit TV movie with endless sequels. Yet, like at turn of the 20th century film when audiences run in fear from the screen the State producing “fear” and “paralysis”, “distraction” and “censorship” to guide us toward inaction.
My FOREVER stamps show the “political rot at the center of the parties” (Gabbard) as zombies, bipartisan Dorian Gray portraits of spiritual corruption. Vote for the lesser of two evils makes me say, “I don’t want to vote for evil.”