John Goto's online exhibition "Capital Arcade" is a fictional shopping mall juxtaposing the disparate value systems of Art and modern marketing in a series of pieces beginning and ending with the artist as the central figure.
The narrative is a journey through the environment of our local mall. Not, as Goto says himself; "..the cathedral like super mall; but the everyday local shopping mall to be found scattered throughout urban and suburban environment alike".
This is a familiar setting and a place of convergence for the local populous. But the brilliant primary colours of the market place that have so often inspired rivers of pastel interiors, represent here, a journey through the post-socialist,"Blair-ite"condition; as Goto remarked,"Government is a Retail Outlet".
The opening work in this latest series seems to affirm this position: "Welcome to Capital Arcade", begins the juxtaposition of values with its relationship to Reynolds' painting, "Garrick Between Tragedy and Comedy". But the setting is a contemporary one; the appropriately named Mandleson Way car park.
It is in this setting that our central figure (that of the artist himself) is being torn between the figures of the cheap, seductive, comedy of consumerism, and the tragedy of frail socialism (who appears to suggest escape as the only course of action) .
But it would appear that tragedy's battle is lost.A system of values that at one time was limited to the market place becomes the essence of culture in contemporary society and begins to commingle with that of social identity, before they finally coalesce. In Goto's work the image of the consumer could be our final identity.
In "Unit 5",Goto's dancing shoppers in front of the façade of NEXT, become the very images of the commodity they desire; a facsimile of the store models in the windows, resembling their two-dimensional, cardboard forms.
They are replete with designer labels and have assured their identities, with uniforms of different rank; "Conformity through Choice,"according to John Goto. Bigger is better translates into more is better,..but more of what?
The use of the logo in Goto's work has a direct relationship to that of Pop Art. The new folk art of the pinball machines and comic books mingled with a fresh concern for narrative, emerged concurrently and independently in America and Britain as a response to the imagery of mass-media.
It could be stated that America became the primary source of this new art because as a nation they were already steeped in media imagery.
Next we look further into Goto's fascinating work
