Consider: There are 5 known cases of men who have played the Marlboro Man that have died due tolung cancer, emphysema and other smoking-related causes. This is the origin of Marlboro cigarettes nickname: the Cowboy Killer.
“Justin A. McHugh collages images of cowboys, the Wild West and cigarettes from old magazine advertisements in critical and poetic ways that refer to early modernisms as well as pop art, situationism and ad busting.
Unlike the literal appropriations of Marlboro ads by Richard Prince his are not bombastic glorifications with postmodern ambiguous irony. His patient analog handmade cutouts are modest in scale, traditionally framed and full of commentary that evokes death and disease disguised as metaphysical or surreal aesthetics.
The macho fantasies of power and freedom obscure the destruction of the landscape, nature and indigenous communities resulting from manifest destiny and the conquest of the West and its subsequent industrialization and commodification. In Justin’s collages this reflects in the body of the cowboy and its absence.”
-Ruben Ortiz-Torres
Exhibited as a Solo Show at Kamil Gallery, UCSD as an undergraduate student.
April 2021
