Subliminal Plastic Messaging: Navigating the World on Fire with the Art of Eridan
Eridan, Plastic Disasters, Tarp, disposable face masks, tufted acrylic, vinyl, single use plastic gloves, thread, latex. 70w x 43h inches, 2021
by Laurence Myers Reese
This summer I was forced to watch the 2021 combo-CGI live action flop Tom and Jerry three times. During the five hour flight from Las Vegas to Newark, the controls for my “in flight entertainment device” (that small screen on the back of the chair) were broken. The device was frozen, stuck in repetition. The airline steward had a simple solution: “Just ignore it.” Despite my best efforts to read, listen to podcasts, draw, I found myself watching CGI animals tear up the Ritz Carlton. My arrogance and intellectualism can’t overcome the wit of a cat with a mallet and a mouse with an even bigger mallet.
Eridan has managed to tap into this - this irresistible candy straight to the brain of the cartoonish. Using familiar comic characters (including our mouse friend Jerry) Eridan’s paintings and sculptures, with their bright colors and cheery motifs, are like Saturday morning cartoon commercials, filling our brain with subliminal messages while we enjoy the pretty pictures. Or maybe it’s like junk food we can’t put down, only to make us sick the next day.
In their recent solo exhibition “Free*” at the Catskills Gallery in New York City, NY this August, Eridan’s work uses pop culture, consumer culture, found objects, and plastic to express our deep anxieties about a world literally on fire. As we navigate catastrophe, we turn to commercial comforts: hot chips, brand name hand sanitizer, classic cartoons. When pleasure is just a click or card swipe away, who needs to worry about an inhospitable planet?
Eridan, the artistic duo of Eri King and Daniel Greer, almost exclusively use plastic media, from manufactured plastics, like toy guns and gloves, down to the yarn and paint (both acrylic). The materials themselves (plastics and petroleum byproducts) are part of the climate crisis. In Plastic Disasters a tidal wave made of blue tarp and vinyl gloves surges through a forest of inflatable palm trees. The palm trees are on fire, covered in little yarn tufts of red, orange and yellow. but the fire is not doused by the water. Just two months ago the ocean was on fire.
Eridan, Mutant Daisies, Graphite, colored pencil, soft and oil pastels on archival paper, 25w x 54h inches, 2021
Mutant Daisies features a screenshot of a google image search, meticulously recreated in graphite, colored pencil, and pastels. Blown up over a hundred times the size of the original phone screen we see the mutant daisy’s floral textures mimicking the acrylic yarn tufts further down the wall. The link underneath the image reads “FACT CHECK: ‘Mutant Daisies’ Near Japan’s Nuclear Disaster Site Are…” But the final lines are cut off. We don’t know what the facts are - is this real or fake? If we choose to believe it’s fake are we disidentifying ourselves from the reality of a global climate crisis? If mutant daisies aren’t real then are we ok to just keep going on and not changing our behaviors? But if the mutant daisies are real… But what if they’re not?
Two white gloved hands, resembling those of our cartoon friend Mickey, emerge from the wall, like a shelf. In the hands sits an embroidered bag of potato chips. The label reads “HELL’S.” A tufted yarn flame erupts from the bag. I can’t stop once I’ve eaten just one of those flaming hot chips. The title, Manufactured Desire, hints at our lust and desire over these objects of consumption - objects that involuntarily harm us in the end.
Eridan, Manufactured Desire, Hand-embroidered snack bag, thread, tufted acrylic, vinyl, size varies, 2021
And indeed, this manufactured desire is implanted into us at an early age. Culture As Weapon features a mandala made of toy guns and toy food. The guns point at us, stuffed with doughnuts. These found objects come to us in their natural colors off the shelves - bright pinks, plies, greens, oranges. All appealing to us like candy, in America, where malnutrition, poverty, food insecurity and food deserts lead to consumption of over-processed, manufactured food products. These guns and food products are sold to us at an early age, too early in fact to understand the subliminal programming that advertisements contain. In Freud’s view the subliminal thoughts were created when (undesirable thoughts and feelings sublimated (or transformed) from the conscious to the unconscious. The Sublime connotes feelings of intensity, pleasure, and beauty. This mandala pattern created in Culture As Weapon gives us an uncanny view of the sublime through toxic plastic materials and an indoctrination to nationalist ideology through toy guns.
Eridan, Culture As Weapon, Assorted plastics, 52h x 52w x 13d inches, 2021
In addition to the sculptural work, Eridan exhibited a series of 6 paintings featuring Disney, Looney Toons, ad mascots, pop culture icons. These scenes share a vision of a world enjoying/ignoring its last hurrah. On one canvas, Snow White lays in a pool of her own blood, sprawled on a somewhat familiar pattern of a casino carpet. In fact, Don’t Drink the Kool-Aid depicts the carpet in the Fiesta Casino (Henderson, NV), according to Eri. Casinos are notoriously well-designed traps for humans. The carpet patterns and floor plans are intentionally confusing in order to get visitors lost in the labyrinth of money spending. Like the mythical Minotaur in the middle of the maze, Snow White has found the Kool-Aid man in the middle of the forest, who jumps out of a TV like a contemporary horror film.
In another painting we see cartoon gloved hands form a Tibetan mudra, as a champagne bottle turned Molotov cocktail goes through a basketball net. The textures of these impasto flames, in vibrant cadmium reds and yellows,, reference the three dimensional flames of acrylic yarn that burst forth from the sculptures. In the background, rows of empty bleachers in a stadium hint at a post-audience, post-apocalyptic dystopia.
In Hypernormalization, Huey (or Louie, or Dewey?) skips rope with a giant string of sausage links. The sausage trails off into the background into the stomach of a Promethean Mickey Mouse. If only the little nephew duck knew where his sausage was made. But how do these paintings register with a child? Are they as sinister as they may feel to an adult? According to Eridan the children who came in the gallery (with smart, hip Art Parents) didn’t seem overly disturbed by the images. They sat down, drew them, enjoyed them as paintings - not as sinister gazes into our near future.
Children are bombarded with images of products and potential moments of joy through objects. Subliminal or not, these advertisements for children (who do not have independent purchasing power like their guardians) train children early on to want something without knowing why. This subliminality - of children’s TV, of hot chip advertising, of the petroleum industry’s convincing us that they’re “working on solutions” with every well produced advertisement - is there to lull us into a sense of security while consuming said commercial or product.
When I met the artists to visit the exhibition, Eri wore a black dress with a daisy on the center of the chest, and Daniel wore a shirt bearing a Ram Dass quote (my favorite Jewish mystic). If the medium is the message, Eridan uses a sublime medium for a subliminal message. They are smart about their materiality and intentional in how they depict and translate a dark subject matter into an art that allows us to reflect on how we consume.
All images courtesy the artists. Photography by Daniel Greer.
”Free*” was on view at The Catskills Gallery in New York August 5-30, 2021.
View Eridan’s work on their website: www.eridanstudio.com or on instagram @eridanstudio
Laurence Myers Reese (he/him, they/them) lives on occupied Southern Paiute lands, in Paradise, NV, where he is a Graduate Assistant and MFA at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. Their research investigates the use of the queer body and queer semiotics to navigate and disrupt cis-normative environments. They received their BFA in Studio Art from the University of Oklahoma, Norman in 2012. Reese is a co-founder of the Vegas Institute for Contemporary Engagement, a research lab for art and experimentation. They have worked as an independent curator, arts writer, non-profit administrator, factory worker, educator, and art gallery director. His work can be found at www.lmyersreese.com
Published by Wendy Kveck on September 20, 2021.