Lot Essay
Vanity and excessive consumerism in contemporary society has proliferated a new generation of blind and aimless individuals. This type of emptiness has transformed products into objects of arbitrary value, and society into a cultural void that disregards and distorts fundamental logic and morality in Aida's world. He lucidly addresses this reality in Louis Vuitton (Lot 1554), a critical commentary on the blind commoditization of fashion items within the hedonic, materialistic culture of contemporary Japanese society.
Imbued with sardonic humour, "This year's harvest is also Louis Vuitton!" gives the double-edged message as to who is the true beneficiary of the consumerist drive. Depicted in the twisted aesthetics of popular commercial media and manga, the toothless Japanese farmer, fatigued from labour, is nonetheless overjoyed by the harvest of the popular French handbags from his field. Perhaps a visual parody channeling the socialist comment made in Jean-Francois Millet's painting of The Gleaners, Aida aims to trigger a new sense of national pride by transforming the image into a mockery of the global consumerist phenomenon, and to scorn the disgraceful assault on national soil, which now fuels the mass manufacturing of non-unique, foreign products. Prevalent issues of social disparities in age, class and gender within contemporary Japan are shrewdly compacted into this inquisitive and direct image that condones superfluous consumption and commodity fetish of the money-oriented generation and their abandonment of pride in self and nation altogether.
Imbued with sardonic humour, "This year's harvest is also Louis Vuitton!" gives the double-edged message as to who is the true beneficiary of the consumerist drive. Depicted in the twisted aesthetics of popular commercial media and manga, the toothless Japanese farmer, fatigued from labour, is nonetheless overjoyed by the harvest of the popular French handbags from his field. Perhaps a visual parody channeling the socialist comment made in Jean-Francois Millet's painting of The Gleaners, Aida aims to trigger a new sense of national pride by transforming the image into a mockery of the global consumerist phenomenon, and to scorn the disgraceful assault on national soil, which now fuels the mass manufacturing of non-unique, foreign products. Prevalent issues of social disparities in age, class and gender within contemporary Japan are shrewdly compacted into this inquisitive and direct image that condones superfluous consumption and commodity fetish of the money-oriented generation and their abandonment of pride in self and nation altogether.