This study aims to analyze the visual meaning of automobile imagery within the transformation of consumer culture in modern industrial society and to extend it into painterly expression. As a primary mode of transportation in contemporary society, the...
This study aims to analyze the visual meaning of automobile imagery within the transformation of consumer culture in modern industrial society and to extend it into painterly expression. As a primary mode of transportation in contemporary society, the automobile transcends its functional role to become a representative consumer commodity reflecting individual identity and social desire. Repeatedly reproduced through advertising and mass media, the automobile has established itself as a central symbolic image of modern consumer culture. Accordingly, this study examines how automobile imagery is expressed in contemporary art through four case studies: Andy Warhol, John Salt, Erwin Wurm, and Lee Ikyeol. Warhol exposes the hollow circulatory structure of consumer commodity imagery through repetition and reproduction; Salt renders the transience and ephemerality of consumer goods visible through the materiality of deteriorated automobiles; Wurm sculpturally articulates the excess of desire in consumer society through the physical inflation and distortion of automotive forms; and Lee Ikyeol expands the formative possibilities of automobile imagery through hyper realistic painting that emphasizes velocity and formal transformation. Their works concretely reveal the process by which automobile imagery moves beyond the mere representation of objects to expand into visual signs. Building on this foundation, the researcher sought to move away from faithful reproduction of automobile imagery and instead propose new formative images through formal transformation and distortion, structural reconstruction, and chromatic emphasis. In the works, the automobile is repeatedly transformed and superimposed at a threshold where it is neither fully dismantled nor realistically fixed. In particular, the study explores the painterly possibilities of deconstructing and reinterpreting mechanical imagery through the combination of automobile imagery with organic forms — natural shapes such as animals and waves — a process through which the structural meaning of desire that consumer society has inscribed onto the automobile becomes visible on the picture plane. Through the analysis of ten works in total, the study demonstrates that the researcher's practice constitutes a painterly inquiry into the structure of desire and visual culture inherent in contemporary consumer society, extending well beyond mere formal experimentation. In conclusion, automobile imagery is affirmed as a significant formative element reflecting contemporary consumer society and visual culture, one that can be expanded into a new painterly language through varied transformation and reconstruction.