New & Improved by Christopher Rouleau
Sign Painting

New & Improved

Now more than ever, we allow advertising to disrupt our audio and visual environments, under the presumption that corporations are looking out for our best interests — that it is simply part of our modern world. But at what cost?

Juxtaposing the benign familiarity of readymade thrift store paintings with artefacts of legacy packaging and advertisements, Christopher uses nostalgia and wordplay to make us confront complex questions about our relationship with consumerism:

Is the current advertising model sustainable?

What is the future of targeted advertising?

How do corporations manipulate our emotions — and purchases — with branding and language?

Can artists survive without sponsorship? Can art exist without ads? Can ads exist without art?

Christopher uses traditional showcard and sign painting techniques to create a false screen print overlay with acrylic, making creative nods to Wayne White, Andy Warhol, and the Dada art movement. Through careful construction/destruction and the use of scale/contrast, he makes us look closer, and urges us to think more critically about marketing language and our everyday consumption.

Works in this series