I’ve actually seen this image around a lot, I chose it because it interests me to no end as well as representing a sort of post modern bitterness. you could read this image in many different ways, something like nothing is precious or it could be a comment on cultural appropriation.
The very fact that the cans are even crushed instead of pristine creates a thrilling visual dissonance between the form of the can and the look of the Ming vase style decoration.

I initially selected this piece because of course I loved the colours the contrast between the relatively flat room scene and the tone shifting fish really caught my eye, upon closer inspection I see a boy sitting awake on the bed with a woman asleep behind him, I’ve read a couple interpretations of sexual awakenings and homosexual metaphors or even child abuse, but when I looked at it before reading those I saw a boy (I didn’t notice the woman) who woke up from a nightmare in reality the room is pitch black but in his head its full of the things he might have seen while asleep. A drowning dream I expect.

The final image is a vaporwave inspired piece. Emerging in 2010’s as “an obsession with ’80s and ’90s consumer culture”Beauchamp (August 18, 2016) , vapourwave is a movement of deconstruction. It takes recognisable elements of 80’s/90’s culture and mixes it into something new, yet nostalgic. In the image above the Domino’s Pizza advert is contrasted against an illustration of a roman statue. The statue is luxuriating in eating grapes which ties in with food, but also shows how vapid averts are. Adverts will try to sell you an idea of yourself rather than the product itself and I feel like this is ironically dramatized in the image. Vapourwave had the key elements of 80’s/90’s pop culture down so well that the movement changed into more paint-by-numbers aesthetic. Find old media, chop it up, slap on an old TV grain and a pink gradient. I think eventually the movement got lost and became the thing it originally was commentating on.

refer to bibliography for references.