Vandana Jain

Nick Stillman

The art of Vandana Jain, introduced by NYFA Current Editor Nick Stillman.

The mechanical vocal tones of a talking computer float through Vandana Jain's studio, robotically ticking off a monstrous list of slogans:

Vandana Jain Mandala: McDonald’s-Land o' Lakes (2002) Iris print Courtesy the artist and 65 Hope Street Gallery

"The happy symbol of a friendly way of life."

"Along the highway to anywhere."

"Red, white, and you."

"For extra fun, take more than one!"

The subject lines of email spam? Consumerist patriotic propaganda? Neither, actually—the pithy declarations are a few of Coca-Cola's corporate slogans from the years 1886-2001, and Jain has programmed her Macintosh computer to recite all of them—to the tune of Chopin's Funeral March. Having established a conceptual methodology for exposing and deconstructing corporate America's culture of branding through an analysis of corporate logos and slogans, Jain is just beginning to make art that doesn't exist on a two-dimensional plane.

This methodology is clearly staked out in her contribution to the group show Eat Me at 65 Hope Street Gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on view until May 9. Jain's work on paper—decorative arrangements of corporate logos that form mandalas, tangram puzzles, and common symbols like hearts or crosses—sabotages the public face of private capitalist enterprises. Unsurprisingly, she collects logos to the point of obsession. Containers full of salvaged logos both ubiquitous and obscure fill the shelves and drawers of her Brooklyn studio. Following the lead of artists like Ashley Bickerton, Tom Sachs, and Mark Lombardi who have located their work within the context of advertising or the implications of corporate America's influence on the world's economy, Jain transforms the logo into a devotional icon, mocking the connections big-money corporations harbor with Washington politicians and consumers' tendency to seek faith, trust, and status in the corporate brand.

Vandana Jain Sacré Coeur d'Hallmark (2003) Metal leaf on vellum Courtesy the artist

The Tangram Series represents Jain's most overt imposition on commercial logos, as elements from a variety of corporate brands are mashed up, resulting in an abstracted offspring composed of its parents' recognizable elements, but ultimately representative of a not-yet-extant corporation—a sci-fi vision of an inexorable future where mergers create a godly ur-company. Similarly, Jain chooses logos for her mandala arrangements based on their ability to work with each other formally and conceptually, although each is kept intact. The Icons of the New Mysticism series is perhaps her most complicated and conceptually-oriented work to date. Stark arrangements of logos form common shapes such as hearts, crosses, and infinity symbols. The Icons play on the dual roles of a logo: to historicize a company and to argue for its utility in contemporary society. Thus, a series of Hallmark crowns forms a sacred heart, connecting the protectorate responsibilities of medieval kings with George W. Bush's compassionate conservatism—an escalating War on Terror in the name of defending "our lifestyle," which has come to depend on free trade and the creation of arguably unnecessary consumer markets—like that of the gift card.

"It's so amazing to see history happening through advertising," Jain recently remarked to me. Today as I write this, The New York Post reports that Calvin Klein's New York City billboard ads have incited yet another public controversy. If any publicity is good publicity, CK's exploitation of brash sexuality to sell an image is ingenious. While moral conservatives cry foul, the company capitalizes by strengthening its sexy appeal to its base clientele. Similarly, the wildly successful billboard ads for Macintosh's iPods combine bright monochrome backdrops with the silhouettes of youthful hipsters. Not coincidentally, lines snake out the door of its Prince Street store in New York City on days new accessories or models are unveiled.

Although from a distance Jain's work contains all the mass-produced slickness of a billboard ad, she mostly applies materials such as gouache and gold leaf by hand. Her belief is that the hand application of materials to create symbols normally seen in glossily perfected states serves as a reminder to the viewer that a person made it. Recent group exhibitions of American art in New York City like the 2004 Whitney Biennial and the recently-opened Majority Whip at White Box reveal an overwhelming disinterest among many young American artists in engaging seriously with America's nation-building or the economic implications of corporate globalism. Jain, 29, refuses to draw opinionated and obvious conclusions on either situation, but never allows either to escape her work's content. Rather, through a coldly cryptic reorganization of corporate logos, she reveals much more pointedly than could ever be inferred from their public face what corporations' identities might really represent.

For more information on Vandana Jain, please visit:
www.artcodex.org/vj_gallery/vj_main.html
www.65hopestreet.com/jain.htm