Take Some Home Today 

Curator: This striking mixed-media collage is "Take Some Home Today" by Ben Frost. Its dense layering of images immediately grabs your attention, doesn't it? Editor: Absolutely! It's chaotic yet captivating. The vibrant colors, the sheer number of elements... It's a visual assault, but somehow it all holds together. There is no horizon. I’m very intrigued by this accumulation of elements! Curator: Frost's work often deals with appropriation and the effects of consumer culture on our collective consciousness. The piece incorporates pop art imagery—comic characters, brand logos—and juxtaposes them in unexpected ways, really engaging with pop art legacies of people like Andy Warhol. It invites us to reflect on the messages these images subtly (or not so subtly) convey. Editor: Look at the integration of text fragments among this crowded composition: "As seen on TV" screams loud the artwork. Also "The End" at the other extreme and then at the bottom, with great force and dimension, the word "PEZ" with its typical branding. There are formal dialogs and tension everywhere, really powerful. Curator: Precisely. Note how those iconic images from pop culture mix with medical illustrations—like the figures from old pharma ads or the stylized skeleton. The juxtaposition forces a re-evaluation. We're drawn in by nostalgia and then confronted with potentially darker subtexts. It looks very close to the punk and post-punk collage aesthetics of people like Jamie Reid and Linder Sterling. Editor: True. It’s a challenging piece. Even on second glance, you still feel unsure how to synthesize so many colliding voices. But each has its own crisp visual quality, either photographic or graphic in origin. I keep discovering new elements, and with that, a heightened sense of its complexity, Curator: It challenges our understanding, and perhaps, that’s Frost’s goal. Thank you. Editor: Thanks, it’s been revealing to study its disquieting beauty through your perspective.