“Music, commercial breaks, news flashes, adverts, news broadcasts, movies, presenters—there is no alternative but to fill the screen; otherwise there would be an irremediable void…. That’s why the slightest technical hitch, the slightest slip on the part of the presenter becomes so exciting, for it reveals the depth of the emptiness squinting out at us through this little window.” – Jean Baudrillard

We live in a world where what we know at a basic level has been processed, refined, and dictated to us. They are the creators of the sounds, images, and ideas that have been processed, refined and dictated to give us our being. They are sometimes corporations and sometimes individuals. They all use media to make their sounds, images, and ideas our sounds, images and ideas. They have their truth for us. They have their meaning for us -and because it is their meaning, it is our ‘emptiness’.

My work comes from the same impulse that gave rise to the 19th century Baudelaire notion of the “Flaneur.” I wander amongst the visual imaginary of their images. I take them as a starting point in my art, but I subvert the icons of their intentionality. Subversion is recontextualization of hyper-designed and superficial icons into my world of meanings. This flaneur is absurd, beatific, self referential, flamboyant, and romantic. His art visualizes aspirations and dreams, hopes and fears, realities and fantasies, truth and lies. Above all it is meant to stun, to stop you dead in your tracks. And then you see: beauty made out of emptiness. —Alexander Reyna