CRITICAL REFLCTION

My practice is to explore the alienation of consumption context between people and things under the influence of consumerism. After the United Kingdom, I began to have the habit of bookkeeping. Every time I collect the receipts after shopping, I can check the price when I keep accounts. Although the habit of bookkeeping has not been formed, it has the habit of collecting receipts. When I opened the drawer and saw the receipts, I found that I had consumed so many things unconsciously. So I wonder if I can make a theme about consumerism. Because the topic of consumerism is very big, and there are many points that can be investigated, so when I first wrote proposal, I only thought from a small angle, that is in the era of big data, consumerism used accurate algorithms to simulate consumers' preferences, so as to stimulate consumers to make works from the Perspective of consumption. But when I did research, I found that this angle is not good for research. The word "big data era" is too abstract to be easily expressed. So I modified my proposal and changed the perspective to how consumerism affects people's lives in the era of mass media.

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In this project, I first bought some shopping and fashion magazines, as well as some receipts and express bills. I made some collages. In collage, I used a lot of advertising portraits and tried to cover their eyes with paint. I think the eye is an important window for us to understand the world and identify information. A lot of consumer information makes our eyes tired and unable to think about what we really need. That's what consumerism wants. The coverage of pigment not only represents the intention of consumerism, but also represents the desire of consumers not to be covered by information. After I investigated Andy Warhol, I decided to use screen printing to express my works. I like Warhol's works very much. In his works, he always prints the same pattern repeatedly, and uses quantity to deepen people's impression of images, which is exactly what I want. Another reason why I choose screen printing is that I like its characteristics. Screen printing always has a mechanical feature, but because of the mistakes and stains in printing, there are more "humanistic factors" than ordinary printing. I made several different color screen printing versions, trying to explore the visual language from the perspective of color. I initially chose blue because it gives people a feeling of melancholy and powerlessness, which is very similar to the feeling of the theme. I also tried the pink mode, because I think pink is a very attractive color, but after many times of printing, I think only one color will make the work monotonous and not easy to attract the attention of the audience. So after investigating Warhol's color method, I tried to match several colors, and also experimented with CMYK mode. It looks great. After that, I tried to print with colored cardboard. Unexpectedly, the visual effect was very good.