Jon Chambers: RAZR: Left Over Mythologies of the Best Selling Clamshell Phone
@ The Milk Factory Gallery
907 N. Winchester Ave. Rear Apt. ( ENTER THROUGH THE RED GATE)
Opening Saturday, June 29th, from 7PM - 10PM
Myth is not defined by the object of its message, but by the way in which it utters this message -Roland Barthes
The mythology of the RAZR phone was created around the idea of a phone becoming a fashion product using celebrity, sex, design, and desire. It was one of the first cellphones to use this technique. Designers made the cellphone thin and sexy. Owning a RAZR was a status symbol, equivalent to owning designer shoes or handbags. As mobile devices are constantly near the body, this status also became part of the owner’s identity. We may now look at the RAZR as obsolete technology from a not so distant past, but the systems of its mythologies and its objective beauty remain true today.
This body of work uses the iconic status of the RAZR and abstracts the myths surrounding it. The process investigates the RAZR through a media archeological approach; collecting the elements that make up the myth (mainly through Internet research) as source material. Using software, sculpture, painting, digital printing and video, Chambers uses the various mythological signifiers of the RAZR, then remixes and deconstructs them into minimal aesthetics. The work humorously confronts cultural memory, media dissemination, technology, and our relationships to these devices.
Jon Chambers lives and works in Chicago. His work focuses on technology and the way culture communicates through it and with it. He received his MFA in New Media Art from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2012. He has exhibited nationally and internationally.
http://jonchambersart.com
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