Pillbilly Fantasia (2012-2013)
November 15 2012-January 5, 2013, Art Gallery of Mississauga, Mississauga.
Rho printing process on ceramic tiles, Variable size (approx 350 square feet)
IT'S A BRUTAL CLIMB TO REACH THAT PEAK...YOU STAND THERE, WAITING FOR THE RUSH OF EXHILARATION... YOU'RE ALONE, AND THE FEELING OF LONELINESS IS OVERPOWERING.
– from the novel Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann
PillBilly is a pop culture term that refers to a person addicted to prescription drugs. Artist Cindy Blazevic has transformed the Art Gallery of Mississauga’s XIT-RM with an installation that defies boundaries between sculpture and photography. The artist re-adapts the space with a sculptural investigation based upon fractal photography. The work is a photographic essay experienced in the round. The 360 tiles, each featuring a photograph of a different pill, remind us of the lurking presence of the pharmaceutical industry. The visual result is a dizzying, sensory overload for the viewer – an immersion into the glossy, candy-coloured, overwhelmingly tempting world of medication.
The room provides an escape from the darker hues and rougher textures of reality, and invites viewers to lose themselves in the fantasia of pills. Red ones, yellow and green ones, pink ones... the world of the pill is investigated in detail as a minute sculptural object of illusion connected to human pain. Blazevic is interested in the notion “that we are all dependent, that we are all pillbillies in a broader, medical sense.” The artist believes that one is not born anxious, or in pain; one becomes that way. PillBilly Fantasia, then, is a kind of Promised Land – where the promise is to fix anything and everything with a pill.
– an excerpt from the catalogue by Stuart Keeler, Director/Curator of the Art Gallery of Mississauga
A wall of pills from this show is featured in a private commission, Toronto.
