“In September of 2003, a gallery showing titled This Is Your God was held at sixspace. The gallery sent out 800 dollar bills stamped with the Obey star. They were sent out randomly to people on the sixspace mailing list, along with invites to the opening.
Signed edition of 300. 18 x 24 inch screen print.”
“This is Your God depicts the value and act of obedience as the common denominator for religious, political, and financial facets of idolization.”
“The This is Your God show in 2003 at the Six Space gallery in downtown L.A. was an opportunity to showcase the sociopolitical message of the Obey campaign by paying homage to John Carpenter’s They Live, which was a major source of inspiration and the basis for my use of the word “obey.” The movie has a very strong message about the power of commercialism and the way that people are manipulated by advertising. One of my main concepts with the show (and the campaign as a whole) was that obedience is the most valuable currency. People rarely consider how much power they sacrifice by blindly following a self-serving corporation’s marketing agenda, and how their spending habits reflect the direction in which they choose to transfer power. In They Live, the protagonist discovers hidden messages lurking behind billboards and anything commercial, and the money says “THIS IS YOUR GOD” on plain white paper. I designed a graphic that looked somewhat like real money but with that slogan, which we used for the invitations and a billboard I rented on the corner of Sunset and Hollywood to promote the show.”
ps. Money nor Idolization ain’t my God. But yeah. TS is making us spend way too much money. Ahem.
