the street is our gallery

Jorge Rodríguez-Gerada speaks out about our relationship with social media with his latest mural, ‘Byte the Candy’, for Urvanity 2021 in Madrid.

It’s the first piece created by Gerada which brings his terrestrial land art style to the wall, creating a perfect union of the two aesthetics.

In 1984, Neil Postman gave a talk about how we are “Amusing Ourselves to Death”. He criticised how the news we see on television is entertainment, there only to maintain our attention in order to sell advertisement time instead of trying to make us think.

Today, we are living something beyond what Neil Postman was warning us about, social media platforms, with a system of algorithms that have no conscience or mercy. These algorithms work incessantly to keep our constant attention to see advertising and propaganda, and in that way become more efficient with the use of personal data, achieving the ability to target advertising that coincides exactly with the profile of interests of each user.

Orwell, Huxley and Postman are rolling in their graves, raising their voices from the past when all of this was just a macabre idea, while the artists of the 21st century are complicit, do not denounce or give alternatives. In this portrait I incorporate the “on” button symbol that is ubiquitous in our technological reality, on the portrait of young beauty, to create a visual dialogue and invite contemplation about the possible narratives that the piece may have and how the spectators might see themselves reflected within it.