through Westerners’ trash. In another work, a man in a hazmat suit
dangles a Happy Meal at the end of a pole to lure a befuddled-look-ing Charlie Brown. Posters’s point is twofold: the company gets children
hooked on unhealthy food with the promise of plastic toys that end up
in landfills.
Hogre, who started as a traditional graffiti artist in 2007, views subvertising as a “psychic defense against the virus of consumerism” that
imposes a lifestyle that is always the same. In one of his works, the word
“subvertising” appears in block letters on the side of a building where
the colorful scraps of past advertisements remain, reminding us that the
latest brands and trends are ephemeral. In Social Cleansing, a disembodied hand with a large broom sweeps up people and old buildings as so
much garbage to protest the gentrification of an English town.
Vermibus, Dissolving Europe, Milano, 2013