Striking Images Reveal What It Really Takes to Live a Life Of Luxury

[Recursion]

Cool piece... Gomez paints workers into advertisements for luxury goods and services

http://www.policymic.com/articles/77863/striking-images-reveal-what-it-really-takes-to-live-a-life-of-luxury

Ramiro Gomez (RG): Those images are important because they create a reaction within me. That reaction is the first step in my artistic process. I re-appropriate the advertisements with an intention to interrupt the underlying sales pitch. In the case of these luxury magazines, they consciously present an ideal environment unconsciously devoid of the people tasked with maintaining those environments.



While I worked as a nanny, I realized the luxurious image of the Hollywood Hills was far different from the reality. I want to respond to these advertisements to bring a consciousness based on my experience. By painting directly on the surface, I feel empowered to bring out a truth I feel. The modifications I make with acrylic paint change the original strategy of the magazine advertisement ... My motive is to create empathy with the figure's labor and intervene in the bourgeois spaces that shape the seemingly endless desire for material interests at their expense.



One of the housekeepers I worked with once told me she loved art and would be interested in stopping into galleries and museums but felt out of place ... Sometimes, she said, she wished she had the time to go see art but her schedule didn't allow her much free time, the artwork in the homes she cleaned would have to do. The room I had with the family in the home where we worked was filled with my artwork, and she would mention to me how she liked cleaning my room and seeing what I was creating. When she saw my magazine work, she mentioned how much she loved them and how she had never thought about herself as an art subject. One of my early magazine paintings, called "Leticia," was inspired by her.



That information she gave me inspired my reason to evolve from small magazines to larger work that I could install in those neighborhoods. In 2011, shortly after I stopped my job as a full-time live-in nanny, I had the idea to create a cardboard portrait of a gardener and place it against the hedge of a home. I created more and placed them along the famous stretch of Sunset Boulevard through Beverly Hills for a creative group art show called the "Los Angeles Road Concerts."

[daleanime]

1. Kick....

[mountain grammy]

2. I've scrubbed toilets in some pretty fancy mountain mansions

but that bathroom is a beauty. Nice works of real people in unreal surroundings. I know the feeling.

[grahamhgreen]

8. Without the maintenance, the beauty would cease to exist.:)

[Warpy]

12. If they had vessel sinks, you should have gotten combat pay

And yes, the bathroom one is perfect, the privileged bird daydreaming out the window while the unprivileged person scurries around with a dustpan and brush to scoop up any hairs that drop and mar the perfect sterility of the room.

[mountain grammy]

13. I charged extra for vessel sinks and bunk beds.

[adirondacker]

3. In my younger years, I did landscaping in Kissinger's neck of the woods. Hardscaping, planting,

treework, and mowing at some of the wealthiest residents of the country's summer homes. They used to love having their yards (some 20 acres) sprayed with Sevin and Malathion so as not to have any pesky insects around for their parties. Some residences required all 500 gallons (diluted solution) of the tank truck to get it down to zero bugs, since you have to soak the trees, shrubs and yard. It's all about the appearance for some folks.

[Demeter]

9. OMG

I hope they all get cancer. It would only be fair.

[Iwillnevergiveup]

4. Thank you, Recursion

These are quite stunning - I forwarded them on to multiple friends/family.

K&R

[Bluenorthwest]

5. This is some great work, thanks for sharing it

I will in turn be sharing these images with others.

[Demo_Chris]

6. REC!

[chervilant]

7. k&r for this artist,

for rendering us visible where the uber wealthy want us to be invisible.

[LiberalEsto]

10. My daughter worked as a nanny for wealthy families

I forwarded this to her. She will love it.

[truedelphi]

11. Kicked a R'd. One of the stranger realities of the homes of the Uber rich

Is how so very many of these residences are unoccupied.

Go to any upscale neighborhood at any point in the year, and the only people around are the hired help. Occasionally a FedEx driver, or a police car on patrol.

These areas of the world are often like ghost towns.

[nashville_brook]

14. this is amazing -- thanks for sharing!

[UnseenUndergrad]

15. Wowzha

I mean, I'm canadian whose family background is the European working/agricultural class raised up to bottom of the middle class... And the thought of an entire ubiquitous ethno-class who maintain the fabulously wealthy is just alien to me. I mean... I live in winnipeg of all places, and though we have a First Nations-underclass (of a rather different problem set) the closest we have to the ubiquity of the Mesoamerican servants in SoCal would be recent Pinoy immigrants in the service sector... And in my parents circles, the kinder attitudes run along th lines of "the kids grow up alright, but many of the parents still act as if they were still in Metro Manila (and not in a good way)".

In short, I have neither the economic nor sociological background to fully grok the implications of this art.