Gloss, Hunger and Value
allure + desire = advertising / advertising - allure = desire
Sheer allure, sheer desire are what drives beauty with interest. always glossier than the truth. billboards stretched with craving, aspiration and envy, an empty promise pressed into light.
Speaking the language of skin: touch me, drive me, want this. Innovation rarely generates noise; promotion does. Advertising doesn't just sell-it creates image, and image is everything. The new "sheer glossy tights", that you need to seduce, a dream stitched to the surface of our own skin. if you're lucky, you'll become the missionary who carries the billboard's truth further. Like the big scale images humming at you, they are seductive ghosts, pixel and paint. Who would I be if I OWNED.
To look at a billboard is to feel the pull of a surface that knows it's watching you. It's desire flattened and magnified, an image that flirts without ever giving in. Desire is no longer private; it is industrially produced, measured in inches of skin and square feet of light. glossy ideas reflect our own longing back at us in fever for surfaces. the ache of distance between image and touch. a body, a color, a promise - something that feels like truth but is only desire rearranged. And then there is size! there is no arguing with large scale truth.
- City Galerie Wien for Olivia Coeln, solo, 2025
