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Email PageHAVIDOL: When More is Not Enough
February 8, 2007- March 17, 2007
Reception: February 8, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Justine Cooper
Daneyal Mahmood Gallery
511 W 25th St
Havidol has been extended until March 17th, and Justine will be in the gallery on Sat. March 10th from 3pm on. At 5pm on the 10th she will be giving an artist talk on Havidol.
"Everyone should be able to live life to its fullest. I used to believe I did. I felt confident in myself, and my relationships. I exercised regularly. I slept quietly through every night, and awoke each morning feeling refreshed and ready to start a new day. I now know I had a treatable disorder..”
Consumer advertising for prescription medications was legalized in 1997. Since that time, more and more prescription drugs are being developed and sold which can be lifestyle enhancing rather than life-saving. In response to the marketing and advertising tactics of the pharmaceutical industry Cooper has created a fictional marketing campaign to launch her magic-bullet lifestyle pharmaceutical HAVIDOL® which treats Dysphoric Social Attention Consumption Deficit Anxiety Disorder.
HAVIDOL is a frightening approximation of the real thing. Parody gives way to possibility as Cooper recreates the entire drug marketing process--from the invention of a new disorder (wherein a need is first found and then the disorder is penned) to the branding process of naming the drug, its pill and logo design, promotional merchandise, and finally its website, TV and print advertisements.
HAVIDOL taps into our collective desire and expectation that there is always room for improvement, while walking the line between poking fun at ourselves and wondering how to obtain a prescription. The marketing message leaves us with the sense that we are never good enough, nor have enough. Are we a society of hypochondriacs, or are we biologically built and genetically urged to out-compete our peers and former selves? Cooper's works on exhibition comment on our temperamental relationship to western medicine, built upon the idea of a malfunctioning body or mind, and the yearning to believe everyday life can be remedied.
HAVIDOL is an artful parody of a new kind of gold rush heralding an era in which pharmaceutical companies mine psycho-chemicals for a public who is ready to swallow almost anything in the pursuit of the new American Dream: a life without pain, only gain.
Books and DVDs related to artists in this show
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