London Based Artist Gordon Cheung puts an interesting contemporary spin on traditional Dutch still life paintings as a means to engage with the concept of alternate narratives and economic bubbles.
Initially inspired by investigating the financial crisis in 2008 Gordon Cheung became interested in the idea of economic bubbles, in which asset prices appear to be based on implausible or inconsistent views about the future. The first economic bubble was recorded in the Dutch golden age as the so-called “Tulip mania”. Still life paintings of this era depicted lavish items and flowers, specifically tulips, which were seen as a very fashionable flower and thus sold for extraordinary prices, eventually crashing their economy in 1637.
But what does this have to do with Cheung’s works for “New Order”? Well, the glitched images represent the dissonance between two realities: the medium of the original artwork and the computer screen through which you view it. In other words, visually illustrating the concept of economic bubbles in a contemporary language, brought together by the tulip and its symbolism of the Dutch golden age.
(Pictured) Gordon Cheung, Jan van Huysum I (Small New Order), 2015. Digital inkjet print on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag 308gsm paper. Paper and image 74.6 x 57.4 cm. Edition of 20.
Go check out Cheung's other work which includes more glitch artworks as well as his own paintings and sculpture.