Corporate logos: We see them every day. We have lived with them for so long that they are embedded into our collective subconscious; a part of the human experience. Egon Zippel manipulates these symbols and invites us to look at them in a new way. MMMNCA are the initials of six of the world’s best-known companies. Egon has chosen to work with - McDonald’s, Marlboro, Mickey Mouse, Nike, Coca-Cola and Apple and uses them as building blocks in the creation of new SUPER- or ÜBERLOGOS

Corporate logos have been imposed upon the world’s psyche since time immemorial. For 25 years Egon has exploited these lauded symbols to construct a body of universal iconography. As the world becomes increasingly corporate his concept resonates currently now more than ever. He combines trusted images to create landscapes, conglomerations, logo-friezes, infinite animation, and gold sculptures.

The MMMNCA series comments on this everyday imagery - the corporate symbols which saturate our consciousness, the gilded pseudo-paradise; the commercial hyperbole foisted upon us from all quarters. Cunning, hypnotic icons are painted on canvases distressed by everyday use illustrating the sharp contrast between the life we are promised by corporate hype and the messy reality that daily life gives us.

Zippel’s inspiration for many of his MMMNCA configurations come from Stanley Kubrick’s space station spinning slowly as it orbited Earth in, “2001: A Space Odyssey.” In order to realize a vision of logos moving in time and space he invited Frederic Gontier to program a non-repetitive animation sequence that would encompass changes in size, transparency, velocity; and color as the logos drift about in a universe of their own design. The work addresses randomness and beauty as it captures a flux in clarity and obscurity of the six logos while they merge into new forms and configurations.

The GOLD SCULPTURES were created with the viewpoint of the corporations in mind. There is nothing more valuable to a corporation than its branding. The marketplace tries to infiltrate our psyches, seeking to fill any void it can find with its logos and the products they represent. Egon takes this idea to its zenith by fusing several of the world’s best-known logos into SUPERLOGOS, launching them to a glorious elevation of pomp with the shine and massiveness of gold.

Regarding his distressed canvasses: Zippel creates an organic chaos as a backdrop to the metaphorical battle of the logos as they vie for supremacy in our collective consciousness and marketplaces. The artist laid raw canvasses all over his house. Some were used as tablecloths, others as bath mats and sofa throws. The result was a collection of paintings with new entities and complex mutations that delineate the contrast of mess and order in our quotidian reality.

All of these artworks are part of an ongoing series that employ various templates in order to capture a single moment in the endless movement of time and space. Picture if you will, an animation cell. One can easily imagine the frame that comes before and the one that will come after. Egon’s work could be viewed in a similar way. Each painting is a freeze frame from an infinitely unfolding story.

Applies to all of the MMMNCA series (SUPERLOGOS, LOGOLANDSCAPES etc.): arrangement variable...

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From: Richard Kroehling
Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2012 12:32 AM
To: egon zippel
Subject: while I slept I wrote 2 reviews and copied them down verbatim
 
THE CORPORATE LOGO PAINTINGS OF EGON ZIPPEL

What a wild cosmos is depicted in the corporate logo painting of Egon Zippel! With blank raw unpainted canvas Egon creates this series of paintings by draping raw canvass on the dinner table to catch the random spills of his guests. 

Egon says the process is to remove the ego(n) from the work. The paintings depict a universe that has turned negative, the black of the night sky is now plain unpainted white canvass stained with dirt and rings of wine glasses and corporate logo objects float spookily in the firmament like celestial objects, they are a deep deathly black.  

The stained blank canvasses and black assemblages of well known corporate logos mutate to form complex logos of mega-corporations of a near future time. Space itself is celebrated in a Kubrickian abstracted dance of the logos whirling in precise galactic rhythms, a troubling music of the spheres. 

There is a Germanic sensibility buried deep inside these wonderful paintings ---  a Göttderdämmerung of ultimate war against humanity as the corporate all-powerful elite are now joined forces (merging logos) and are in control of the vast stellar spaces above our heads. You get the feeling that the final battle for the future is about to begin or has already ended and it has not at all a good thing for humanity or even creation itself.
-Richard Kroehling