The artist turning his media cynicism into art

“One of my overarching goals as an artist is to share my disillusioned vision of the world in the hopes that people will understand just how influential and damaging the messaging of mass media is,” says Brooklyn-born artist and photographer, Daniel Greer, whose work will go on display in London at Something in the Attic's Brooklyn vs. London exhibition, launching tomorrow. One of the original members of the Brooklyn Collage Collective, Greer is a self-professed cynic whose frustration with mass media speaks volumes through his work: twisted, melting, disfigured reappropriations of images or advertisements that mock and question their intentions.

As a child, he developed a strong critical perspective thanks to his parents, where talking back at TV commercials became a family pasttime. “I tend to approach mass media with a strong cynicism,” he says. “When I was a child, I would beg for toys I saw in ads and my mother would explain to me that advertisements were created to convince me to want things. So I think from an early age I understood their manipulative qualities.”

“My method can be boiled down to subversive indication. In my work I try to do as little as possible to preserve context and make small albeit bold adjustments to reveal the latent harmful messaging we often digest without a second thought,” says Greer. “ I mainly feel disgust or some form of aversion when I interact with mass media because most of it is sterile, impersonal, broadcasted messages that attempt to authoritatively present itself as culture.”

See Greer's work at Brooklyn vs. London, an exhibition hosted by Something in the Attic, featuring Mike DeSutter, Lizze Gill, Morgan Lappin and more, from 12th-27th June at London's Carousel gallery