Advertisement agencies use visual imagery form the contemporary art scene as reference material for their ad campaigns. Reference imagery (and other media) have a big impact on how the mainstream visual culture develops. It’s a two way street as pop-culture imagery also inspires contemporary artists.. But most often artists take a critical view.
Inspirational images can at sometimes be copied almost directly for commercial usage.. A creative director is all the time collecting appealing imagery which s/he can use when explaining a concept to the photographer or video makers. Sometime direct references are made unintentionally.. Sometimes references are near exploitative.
In an earlier post we covered an “invisible car” project originally made by a second year art studentSara Watson which hit the main stream news in the uk 2009. Three years later (2012) Mercedes Bents published their “invisible car” – project and youtube viral campaign to promote their new pollution free car line.
We’ve also covered how performance artist Roi Vaara’s work in 2006 was seen influencing fashion in 2012… Which brings us to the featured image above. Mr. Vaara (also known for chair related performances) made an epic video over ten years ago called “Artist’s Dilemma” (youtube link). We started the NO-CHAIR-DESIGN Campaign 2011.
I would love if the advertisement company behind the campaign would really had used our work as visual reference! But I guess there is no way to know..Anyway that’s an inspiring picture…
When we present our invisible chair we are often compared to this youtube viral video made illusionist Ramana.. Everything is interlinked and one never know what’s real or a copy.