1 Will Cotton, Cotton Candy Clouds (Sandra and Rebecca), 2006. Oil on linen
2,3 Laurie Hog in, Pharmaceutical Guinea Pigs The Most Heavily Marketed Hypnotics (Ambien, Lunesta, Sonata, Rozerem), Rozerem, 2008. Oil on panel/Laurie Hog in, Pharmaceutical Guinea Pigs The Most Heavily Marketed Hypnotics (Ambien, Lunesta, Sonata, Rozerem), Ambien, 2008. Oil on panel

From Sleek Magazine:

Will Cotton

Candy is where it starts. Parents and other grown-ups eagerto be liked, or too lazy to offer more wholesome rewards,carelessly sprinkle a sugar path that can lead children intotoxic eating patterns, lonely gluttony, bloated bodies, ataste for cheap, illicit and fleeting treats or actual, fullyformed addiction.Then comes Will Cotton. Will Cotton’s paintings oftreats, and pretty eye-candy-quality pin-ups, are as decadentlydelicious as the sweetness he depicts. There are noconsequences presented in Cotton’s hedonistic scenes, butviewers know that outside fantasy, indulgence has its price.Cotton paints in an era where material delights come inendless quantities, but whose sweetness is poisoned bygluttony and guilt. Candy satisfies emotional needs andfrivolous fancies, but it distracts the body from its genuinehungers, leading to fat, not fulfilment."I like the universality of sweets as a metaphor foranything that can be sought in the pursuit of pure pleasure", Cotton eloquently explains. "Desert is a reward, anindulgence. It’s not utilitarian; it’s usually dressed up inpretty colours and decorated to look as appealing as possible.It exists to incite desire with the promise of a pleasurablereward. It’s not meant to nourish or sustain life andit won’t." Cotton proclaims, "my work doesn’t specificallyaddress addiction." But the pleasure he paints is so evocative that art cognizant junkies have cited Cotton’s imageryas illustrations of the actual experience of being high onheroin, while self-identified anorexics have used Cotton’simages as a way to articulate the pleasure of self-indulgentself-denial.These linkages, although unintended, are tied to Cotton’sown understanding of his images’ import. "I’ve noticeda correlation between the state of addiction and thepursuit of the unrealisable dream of paradise. In my workI’m referring to the impossibility to actually fulfil desire, tothe necessity that the utopian ideal should be in fact unattainablein reality. And that while the pursuit of pleasureshould logically lead to fulfilment, there’s a possibility thatthose things that are most attractive to us become the mostpoisonous."

Laurie Hogin

Sanitised and sanctified, doctors’ offices ought to be sanctuariesfrom temptation and dangerous addictions. Buttoo often doctors act as addicts’ enablers and suppliersout of laziness, self-righteousness or greedy self-interestwhen they carelessly encourage suffering, sick people tomedicate their troubles away. Often one generation’s curewill be discovered to be a toxin by the next. And whilewe trust doctors, our trust can be rewarded with the terrifyingawareness that their knowledge is limited. Chicago painter Laurie Hogin demonstrates this in PharmaceuticalGuinea Pigs: The Most Heavily Marketed Hypnotics (Ambien,Lunesta, Rozerem, Sonata), part of her expansive seriesentitled, "American Mania – The 100 Most PopularDrugs in the Nation", which depicts pharmaceutical pillpoppers experimenting with their body, health and sanityunder their doctors’ distracted gaze. As Hogin asserts,"we are the guinea pigs, whose chemical lives and needsproduce profits for others while a true attention to healthand healing is sublimated in service of the orientations oflate capital." Hogin mixes the spectacular technical talentof Sir Edward Landseer with the politics of anti-corporateactivist Naomi Klein to create some of the most arrestingand distressing images exhibited in the New York artscene. As she explains, "This series deals with the waysin which the synergistic interests of the pharmaceuticalindustry, the medical insurance industry and the arroganceand faddism of the medical establishment interact to resultin the marketing of psychotropic, sometimes dangerous,sometimes addictive drugs to consumers. This is done in away that orients the perception of the drugs, making them appear as if they were just another commodity. Drugs arethe first solution considered and often in contradiction togood science and the subtleties of real human experienceand need." The cautionary lesson Hogin seeks to teach isthat like her hyped-up guinea pigs, prescription junkiescan become fuelled by chemicals, addled by addiction, andhobbled by the blind hope that doctors know best.

Sylvia Plath

"Dying is an art like anything else/I do it well/I do it so it feels like hell/I do it so it feels real/I guess you could say I have a call.