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McTopia is the title of my solo exhibition at the Diane Farris Gallery in Vancouver in December, 1998.
This show will consist of eleven large-scale oil paint and mixed media work dealing with the effects of fast-food culture
on our society.
The central work in McTopia will be a full size drive-thru menu board and interior
menu boards arranged to look like a church altarpiece. This installation, titled My McTopia, will depict McDonald’s
workers, menu text and wood frames built to replicate actual restaurant menu boards. I hope to give the figures a saintly
air to emphasize the way our society worships consumer culture.
Other works will explore similar themes.
The two largest paintings in the show, Big Mac and Avalok, will each depict a single McDonald’s employee. Big Mac will
show a male employee transfixed by a hovering hamburger and Avalok will show a female employee depicted as an eastern deity
with eight arms, each holding a McDonald’s product. Another work, Employee of the Millennium, shows a McDonald’s
crew-person floating in a sunset sky over the moniker: Employee of the Millennium.
Other works in
production include one called Angel’s Revenge. This work shows a McDonald’s manager lying prostrate in the drive-thru
lane after being hit by a car. A McDonald’s uniform-clad angel kneels over him. This work coupled with others
in development will create a strong and unified exhibition. This work sees consumerism as so pervasive it might even accompany
us into the afterlife.
I feel that these works will be my best to date in dealing with the themes
of fast-food culture and consumerism. I have chosen McDonald’s as a symbol for our greater consumer culture. With this
I hope to explore the way that corporations and similar institutions play an enormous role in shaping our behavior in the
modern world.
November, 1998
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