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Andrew James Oakes

Experience the difference too

LA ART WALK - November, 2012

 

What happens when the art of advertising and the art of the streets collide?

 

This show and these miniature billboards simultaneously represent the work of both worlds as they seemingly compete for space and an opportunity to get their messages out.

 

In this simulated and “conceptual environment” we have set up a mock landscape, where bad advertising concepts and their meaningless messages can be crushed by good artwork.

 

In this experiment, street artists were given concept billboards – each containing the same ubiquitous and empty message “Experience the Difference”. Artists were free to cover the current message with work of their own.  As expected they brought real meaning and essentially “actual difference” to each billboard with their own art. Simply put, much better than the universally lame and lazily formulated marketing speak than was previously there.

 

It was exciting to see the unexpected and unique results, lending to the premise that the human hand and it’s creative and interpretive abilities was able to rise above the benign consumer driven messaging that has become so prevalent in our urban panorama.