PORTFOLIO

MARTHA FLAVIN

'Flatness'

A condition of late-capitalism.

I am a 3D/conceptual artist with an interdisciplinary approach.
My practice explores ‘flatness’, as a condition of late-capitalist society, both physically and emotionally.

I have experimented with screen-based media to transcend the flatness of the screen, bringing the virtual world into physical spaces. I have been particularly interested in how an audience feels when they have to engage with physical spaces from the proximity of a screen.

I am looking to translate my background in art into a career in design, working with brands and designers to create new products that cater to the needs and demands of modern-day society and culture.

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'The End of History and the Last Man: Travis Scott Burger' - YouTube

Thinking about the relevance of Travis Scott to McDonald's and 21st century popular culture.

“There are some other significant differences between the high-modernist and the postmodernist moment, between the shoes of Van Gogh and the shoes of Andy Warhol, on which we must now very briefly dwell. The first and most evident is the emergence of a new kind of flatness or depthlessness, a new kind of superficiality in the most literal sense, perhaps the supreme formal feature of all the postmodernisms” (Jameson, 1991)

Andy Warhol Eating a Hamburger from director Jørgen Leth's 1981 film, 66 Scenes from America

Comparing McDonald's 'Travis Scott Burger' to Andy Warhol eating a Burger King burger in 1981

Jackson Pollock One: 'Number 31, 1950'

A study into 'Medium Specificity' - a Modernist take on flatness

'Ego death' - 2020

Bringing digital spaces into analogue spaces; the parallel world of Chatroulette, exposure of the interface

Audience participation, seeking physical engagement with the screen.

Desire for physicality and participation is an attempt to transcend the text beyond the flatness of the screen and into a ‘real’ space.

The rise of ‘relational aesthetics’ in contemporary art, thinking about why there is a collective craving to obtain audience participation

Instructions for how to build a fortress' - IKEA

"This duality is the first clue to understanding the significance of Ikea and its success in our time. Ikea does more than dialectically bridge the gap between the trashy out-of-town shopping mall and the respectable and tasteful modernist building. This is not just a safe middle ground between Poundland and John Lewis. The Swedish chain operates in a deeper way: it reduces modernism and its institutions (architecture, labour, class, nation, bureaucracy) into a flat image, a simulation, and sells it back as a commodity"

- 'Learning from IKEA: Flatness Unpacked' Pil & Galia Kollectiv