_Tom Huett

_I met Tom at a party this weekend - His work and ideas are really interesting.

The above images are from a piece entitled 'Infiltrators'

"Reality is the medium that defines advertisement; advertisement is the medium that defines reality." - Tom Huett, Spring 2009
Tom Huett's art obsesses over our engagement, or, perhaps more accurately, passive participation with the phenomenon of the media image - especially the power of those archetypes smuggled into our subconscious by the forces of advertising and marketing.

Huett's tactics mimic those of his target; he appropriates, manipulates and plays fast and loose with reality and perception. In doing so the artist objectifies those very tactics. Typically hidden and insidious, capital's dynamics of persuasion are brought into sight.

For the Red Bull Music Academy Huett presents works from ongoing series of portraits entitled Infiltrators. They begin with Huett picking out a model from a high end fashion advert, usually a bit player in their scene. Huett then has a street artist - (Tourist portrait artist) create a portrait of the model.

The fashion advert, for Huett, is a window into an unreachable space, and imagined realm of perfection, in which commodity culture dream an iteration of the idea of human perfection."It mirrors our reality, whilst wearing a translucent costume to mask its own, such as a setting you felt you've been to before or recalling the smile on the face of someone you once knew. It wants us to believe in it, that we could get or become part of what it offers us".

www.tomhuett.com