In this exhibition I wanted to portray serious ideas in a childlike manner, making larger issues look less daunting and scary and vice versa. It brings into focus how we view things in either history or our daily lives, and how we can be so nonchalant to a lot of the issues people face. These ideas are focused on my work and help me display contrasting elements in both realistic forms or colorful designs all correlating to the same idea and view reality and innocence in a different light.

 

In my works, I constantly portrayed the ideas of toys or childhood themes. This can be seen in the appearances of smiling faces or the inclusion of actual toys to display my works of art. An example of this would be sinister Mario, as he gazes back at you with the gaming console in hand, it makes the viewer feel off. The image looks seemingly innocent of the video game character playing the game, but the inclusion of very dilated pupils and the realism of the character puts forth an ominous vibe. This shows how detrimental the addiction to games can be as it makes viewers see games as their real life. Living their lives in the game rather than in reality with the outside world. In addition to this is my work on the twin towers exploding with balloons. We often view these tragedies and associate them with negative emotions but putting balloons instead of the explosion not only diverts our attention to the balloons but is also satire as I put a tragedy in such a lighthearted manner. Undermining an important moment in history to mere souvenirs children would get at a carnival. 

 

In addition, with many of my works the use of symbolism is portrayed to display the themes of how people tend to cause their own downfall. This is shown in my work, Fire hydrant. Where instead of the fire hydrant shooting out water to fix things it spews more fire and causes the red background to become sprawled around the entire image. And it symbolizes how we tend to try and fix problems but only makes them worse, this can be seen in our daily lives. As we try to fix things that may have already worked but by trying to change them it causes the spews of fire to gush out and result in a larger problem than it was initially. People constantly try and fix problems but they backfire and only become bigger. Also, Cigarette kazoo, showcases how we lose our innocence as we dive into the depths of addiction hiding it with an innocent look. The addiction is something we cause ourselves with by buying into the cool-looking item but as it controls our life the dull colors around the item of the work display its darker side.

 

I also wanted to create stark contrasts in my works with themes that clash against each other. Bringing out the innocence with addiction or trying to lighten dark historical events. This can be seen in my works of toying with a war where war is depicted through the use of toy soldiers which end in the death of everyone. Or my portrayal of the flesh cube where a common toy is put into disgusting body parts mashed together. These contrasts in my work help emphasize my ideas and lean to either side of the spectrum. Bringing innocence into reality or the cruel reality into innocent things. 

 

I hung the works based on how ominous they would be.  As each work becomes darker. This can be seen from my piece, futuristic emotions where people have multiple different personalities but force themselves to categorize themselves in their own category. And as we continue down the slides of the exhibition they transition from simple toys to and I wanted people to become encapsulated in the works as they see themselves slowly realize the change.  The themes of childhood being slowly lost correlates with the exhibition as the innocence of the works slowly fades away appearing more ominous and scary. And slowly, lose their sense of innocence as they see the works reflect the true reality of our world.