“Beauty &”
James Eisen
13 Nov → 12 Dec 2015

For James Eisen’s video installation Beauty &, the artist has used his video camera as if it were a hand scanner, capturing the surfaces and sounds of the home entertainment section of a department store in Tokyo.

The two-channel video projection captures the artificial and seductive advertisements played on the televisions on display: from the images of wildly colourful birds in their native habitat to the fantastical three-dimensional animations of Pixar. Presented alongside this are the branded bodies of customers and sales people that come to either purchase or promote these products. Eisen further captures the artificial surfaces that successfully seduce us when within these spaces through the use of an installed cement floor with overlaid glass, getting up close with the dynamics of the commodity culture.