From linen canvases to plaster and genes, the share amount of mediums available to artists today is historically speaking at its very peak. While some prefer analog ways of expressing themselves, others like to work digitally. But have you ever considered commercials as a viable medium for your work?

While the idea is nothing new; Richard Prince used Marlboro commercials for his art (got sued by the company too, but they lost and the whole ordeal is unimaginably funny, Google it if you aren’t familiar with his work, I myself am a big fan). And a wonderful UK based artist and friend of mine Rory McBeth filled London based gallery Lewisham Arthouse with jumbo-sized empty billboards, that he rented out to various companies for the duration of his show, using the line: “Prime location in central London.” to sell the advertising space.

I also made a (unknowingly) similar project in Liverpool a few years ago where I brought identical replicas of Slovenian billboards to England to be exhibited in a large industrial warehouse-like space, where you could experience the industrial, billboard oversaturated scene of the outside of the gallery being complimented by imported “fancy” industrial billboard oversaturated scenes from another country.

As you may have figured out, this isn’t a story for anyone who is a serious technical maestro and proponent of depictive art, but I myself like some of my exhibitions and project to be practical jokes (humour only gets better when scaled) that may also get people thinking about bigger issues if they so please, or just let them leave thinking: “What the hell was this all about?”

But the point is, while a lot of artists reading this may be totally against any ideas of marketing, advertising or another ways of commercial imagery, I don’t think we really have that much of a choice as too how much of our public lives are (and will be) filled up with advertisements. Because if you like to use Facebook, you can’t use it without seeing the ads that it contains, same for Instagram and a lot of other (more physical) places like public transport, roads, public spaces in general really … (unless you live in São Paulo that is).

And don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t mind going to the Zoo in my city without having to see dumb advertisements about how the new Mazda is as fast as a Cheetah (jesus). On the contrary, I would embrace some form of advertisement if it were created in a fun, natural and especially easy-consumable way that gives me something in return. Because I don’t mind the Apple logo on my laptop, and I know most people didn’t mind McBeth’s gallery installation Lost Prairie, because it wasn’t meant as a dumb interruption, but as a reminder that anything, even a banal billboard ad about trucks, can tell a valuable story if we only give it a chance and the right context to be understood in the way we want it to be. Our work as artists is to capture and communicate emotions, but thing is, that’s what marketers do too. Funny, right?