The interventions of Vermibus utilize solvents and brushes to transform advertisements, deconstructing beauty standards and consumers. The Spanish artist’s process is akin to painting, yet reveals something more human in taking away the flesh of subjects. The artist’s “Unveiling Beauty” and “In Absentia” series, in particular, reintroduce these creations in public spaces across the world.
On the former series, the artist says this: “As points of reference in the fashion industry, Fashion Weeks form and lay down specific standards of aesthetics and beauty, and market them via their advertising: just one more strategy in the globalisation of Western consumer culture,” Vermibus says. “The beauty-cult is as firmly established on the catwalks of every Fashion Week as it is in the advertising they generate. The fashion industry uses the body as a tool in order to sell products, sell consumerism. The image of the body in advertisements limits and oppresses an individual’s true beauty, concealing it behind the false rhetoric of its own liberation.”
See more of the artist’s work below.
