Blow-Up (Sex with Karl Marx): Private View

The interior of the camera is viewed as if in a peep show, the audience has to crouch slightly, much as a fashion photographer might gaze upon the model. The outside of the camera is covered with bill posters and heavy graffiti over a series of film posters and stills from ‘Blow Up’ with mildly erotic images taken from contemporary advertising.

The subject and location of the work explores the tension between the two competing ideologies of the 20th century after the defeat of
fascism, highlighting the struggle between both supporters and
detractors of the materialistic dialectic. The collapsed narrative
between communism and capitalism is revealed as a Sadean master and servant relationship — with capitalism seemingly on top as it paves not only the Economist Plaza but also the world in its relentless round of production — distribution — exchange — consumption.

The work reminds us that the seductive 1960s ‘revolution’ is an appropriation, reduced to advertising & nostalgia. The work also suggests something else about Marx’s ideas — not that they are unfashionable or defunct after the triumph of capitalism but that they are also illicit. Communism is a kind of top shelf ‘perversion’ of the winning orthodoxy. But is Marx is about to turn defeat into triumph? Maybe he is not dead in history, but rather waiting inside the very instrument of the spectacle.