Commercial Break

Hayal Pozanti's RELENTLESS TENDERNESS appeared in the advertising cycle at Westfield World Trade Center as a striking contrast between familiar and unknown languages. Pozanti's alphabet of shapes floats in the background, while its English translation spells out the words “RELENTLESS TENDERNESS,” which scroll across the screen. This distinctively human expression differentiates us from artificial intelligence to emphasize the commonalities we share as a species.

Founded in the VIP lounge of Art Dubai in 2013, the collective GCC aims to investigate the contemporary culture of the Persian Gulf region. Circulating on Barclays Center’s “Oculus”, digital images of the oil paintings of the members of GCC were positioned in the role of “Baba”, or the Father, a title often used by political leaders within the Middle East. Their painted eyes replicated variations of the gaze found in traditional portraits of heads of state, from the “visionary” leader to the punitive stares of a dictator. Big Baba’s eyes are always watching.

Sue de Beer’s films explore social issues in contemporary culture with a unique visual style of colored light, prismatic doubling, and close cropping that create an enticing cinematographic charm.

Her contributions to this exhibition feature two young urban skateboarders from the Bronx “Brujas” feminist skate crew who view their interventions into the city and urban street culture as a deeply political act.

Their strong presence on an advertising screen in the center of the city, images of their political heroes, and de Beer’s final appeal “Don’t Mourn, Organize,” all send a powerful message about the radical nature of their actions.

Cory Arcangel's interest in the language and culture of the internet has led him to establish Arcangel Surfware, a clothing and lifestyle merchandise line and publishing imprint created in collaboration with the global merchandise giant, The Bravado Group, a division of Universal Music Group. This ad spot sends a clear message with its cozy tube socks and branded sweatpants: Arcangel Surfware products consist of everything one needs to "chill" in bed all day and surf the Internet in comfort.

Tabor Robak’s computer-generated works merge 3-D animation, gaming, and the language of marketing to create an instructive tension between reality and simulation. For Barclays Center’s “Oculus,” Robak used innovative methods to create his new colorful artwork.

Heather Phillipson’s videos and sculptural installations are a surge of images, noises, colors and words that, together, form complex poetic digressions on our contemporary moment. "WHAT’S THE DAMAGE" transmitted the energy and emotion of political protest. The work smashed together representations of destruction to reflect back a chaotic, urgent moment onto Times Square.

Meriem Bennani’s new artwork for Barclays Center’s “Oculus” screen was an advertisement for an imagined line of hijabs that expands upon her “Fardaous Funjab” videos. That series, about an invented entrepreneur "avant-garde hijab designer,” addresses the issues surrounding the headscarf's cultural significance and re-evaluates preconceived Western notions about Islamic attire. Her special “Your Year” advertisement proposes an inclusive, multi-ethnic calendar that unifies Islamic holidays with secular ones as well.

Brian Bress’ three videos in Times Square displayed four elusive figures who are delicately balanced in a state of tension. Their subtle movements make them emerge into the foreground or blend in with their bold graphic backgrounds.

Bress’ fabricated landscapes and faceless characters combine humor and art historical references to produce an enigmatic and subtle tableau vivant with powerful metaphorical implications.

Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley create black and white videos filled with historical references that explore the condition of women throughout history by combining wordplay-rich poetry, fictional characters, and utopian environments. Their new video titled Crete Meat, adapted from their 2014 work Swinburne’s Pasiphae, fuses classical antiquity with pop culture. Shown within the context of Times Square, this video became a satire of advertising, highlighting the peculiarities of desire.

"The Crying Sun" was an animated film inspired by the children’s poem "What the Sun Has Seen," by Maria Konopnicka, an influential Polish poet of the positivism period, a translator, journalist and progressive activist for women's rights and Polish independence. Common themes within the poet’s work included the poverty of the peasantry and their oppression; this poem tells, in a childlike manner, of the countryside’s daily life, rituals, and activities, as viewed by the Sun above. In Polska’s video, the Sun, while bright and childlike, starts to cry, becoming a powerful metaphor for the pain of being a passive viewer without having the agency to act.

Her new video, "Lesson LXXV," was a continuation of her ongoing series that began with the artist creating commercials on the ‘lessons’ outlined in Kevin Young's book of prose, "The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness." While previous Lessons have featured personal and found video, for Times Square Syms created a poignant yet disquieting self-portrait with charged overtones.

Casey Jane Ellison is a stand-up comedian, artist, and writer. Working with performance and video, her works often humorously address television and celebrity culture, feminism, identity politics, and the history of art. In line with the ubiquity of online advertising and messaging, Public Art Fund invited Ellison to develop a series of pop-up “ads” for the exhibition’s home page. Ellison created an episode – complete with breaks where the exhibition artworks run as commercials – where she muses on the perils of bread and fascism.