UPTOWN GIRL is the Pop Art Edition of the HIDDEN IN TOKYO picture SALES STARTS TOMORROW, showing only part of the TOKYO collection picture. The fundamental idea to create this picture came when I visited the first Banksy exhibition in Japan, at Yokohama in the fall of 2020. While strolling through the exhibition, I was particularly attracted to one of Banksy's pictures. It shows a group of cloaked women and men in front of a bold red sign bearing the words “Sale ends today” in large white capitals. Prostrated in front of the sign, the group is reminiscent of the lamenting figures typically seen at the base of the cross in Renaissance crucifixion paintings. Banksy is drawing attention to the near-religious fervor with which contemporary society regards consumerism, particularly around events like Black Friday and Amazon Prime Day. The group in Sale Ends seems to be both mourning the last day of the sale and worshipping capitalism, making this an important piece of criticism. In 2020, the U.S., Mainland China, and Japan were projected to be the three biggest markets for luxury goods, with a market size of US$65bn, US$38.1bn, and US$27.4bn respectively. If you look at these numbers in relation with the population of the three countries, Japan is the leading market. People in Japan attach a lot of attention to luxury brands, especially bags and watches, but also cars and clothes in general. The Sale Season is crazy. Shops offer Lucky Bags for a bargain price selling them on a first-come-first-serve basis. People are willing to stand in line for hours to get the newest phone or clothes from luxury brands. So being satirical I turned the message of the pictures around. The innocent Dorothy of Banksy’s picture “Stop and Search”, criticizing stop-and-search legislation for its increasingly unfair targeting of ethnic minorities, has now been turned into a wealthy uptown girl being stopped by a policeman who wants to check her luxury bag for spray cans in front of a HERMES store. Her terrier Toto has been replaced by a pug dog named Tutu who is wearing a fancy Moncler dog jacket. The luxury clothes and jewelry wipe away the innocence of the original Dorothy (1939), who is portrayed as harmless and naive. The base of the artwork is an acrylic painting created with a squeegee. Inspired by my favorite German artist Gerhard Richter, I use this technique to create the base of most of my works. While creating the picture I was often reminded of a Banksy quote: “We can’t do anything to change the world until capitalism crumbles. In the meantime, we should all go shopping to console ourselves.”
