Andrew Norman Wilson’s work in stock media tends to conflate the lines between subversion and genuine interest to appeal to a more corporate audience. To the New York Arts Practicum participants, these works made sense as a sort of twisted, subliminally charged take on traditional PowerPoint presentations or generic TV ads. Cohorts were exposed to a tense world of women crying during phone surveys, corrupted trails of his former Google job, and anxiety-inducing slides set to drone sounds as a penis pops up in the corner. This was weird stuff, but enticingly so.
With some of the participants working in subverting or recreating these corporate aesthetics as a form of critique, Wilson’s art was a definite inspiration. He tilts back and forth between shaking up this otherwise stale, consumer-hungry media aesthetic, and then actually being a salesman of such stock media. Cohorts had many questions regarding his unsettling sounds, Google background, and how he juggles between giving presentations to a business audience compared to an art audience. It was an overall refreshing talk with an artist who plays and operates within these sorts of conventions.