Photographer Profile: James Ostrer

In a world where The Terminator became governor of California, and 1940s screen idol Ronald Reagan was elected 40th president of the United States, perhaps it shouldn’t seem so crazy that businessman and reality TV star Donald Trump is a frontrunner for the Republican pick as contender for the American presidency.

Yet the crazy is made disturbingly clear in a new series of photographs by artist James Ostrer, which examines contemporary celebrity culture and the blurred lines between art, commerce, politics and showbusiness, and features a portrait of the infamous Trump.

Titled The Ego System, the series was recently exhibited at Art Central Hong Kong by Gazelli Art House gallery. The works depict a motley crew of public figures: Harry Styles (of boy band One Direction), Miley Cyrus, Kim Kardashian, Tiger Woods, Damien Hirst and Trump himself. Ostrer’s photographs have broken the mould of traditional portraiture by using models adorned with animal parts as metaphors for the factory-farmed pseudo-celebrities of today.

With a unique style that is part performance art, part social commentary, Ostrer creates caricatures using unlikely raw materials such as calves’ heads, sheep’s eyes, vintage fur coats and cheap mass-produced clothes. The resulting aesthetic is Hieronymus Bosch meets Paul McCarthy.

I meet Ostrer at his house in north London, which he shares with fellow artist, activist and founder of Coco de Mer lingerie brand Sam Roddick. The house also serves as a workspace and gallery, exhibiting artworks created by the couple and their friends, and with curiosities displayed in a glass-topped case in the kitchen, creating the feel of a bohemian 21st century British Museum.

In the studio basement Ostrer’s digital portraits of Donald Trump and Damien Hirst catch my eye: Trump is almost Orwellian, with a real pig’s nose and suit jacket covered in crude oil, capturing his porcine nature; Hirst is depicted as a mythological shark-headed creature, holding a calf’s head and decorated with butterflies.

Ostrer explains: “In all the pieces of work I’ve made for the new show, it’s not that I’ve chosen people I despise or hate. I’ve chosen people who are emblematic of what I see as major concerns over the current state of the human condition.” 

Take Miley Cyrus in a fur coat covered with silicon breasts – a statement by Ostrer, stepfather to a teenage daughter, on the ‘pornification’ of young girls in contemporary society. “The change I have seen in the last 20 years of how aspirational women are depicted has gone from someone wearing a big fur coat, some jewels and a bit of leg showing to semi-nude young girls thinking they are empowering themselves, while actually they’re being degraded by demented misogynists.”

Harry Styles is another young pop star featured in The Ego System, depicted with tattooed pig skin, dressed in a leather jacket, pockets stuffed with Primark G-strings and high heels, a fitting metaphor for a 21st century teen idol. “The reason I have used animal parts in these images is because when you use the term ‘celebrity’ now, it means nothing.

All you see now is what I consider ‘factory faming’; just like the endless production line where pigs are strung up by their ankles and turned into bacon, so are people. There’s a cycle of over-consumption and complete lack of emotional connection to the anima, and that same industrialisation functions in celebrity culture.”

We can’t get no satisfaction point

The Ego System is the sequel to Ostrer’s successful first solo exhibition, Wotsit All About, another examination of the body political, which featured tribal-art-influenced portraits of the artist and a close group of anonymous friends, posing naked but with faces and bodies covered in artfully arranged piles of candy and junk food.

A common theme of the two projects is the link between consumption and advertising: Ostrer followed an unconventional path from business school – where he wrote his dissertation on the ethics of advertising to children – to the art world. He spent several years as a set designer at the Royal Ballet along the way, a career that was cut short when he was hit on the head by falling scaffolding and bedbound for a few months.

Maybe the scaffolding was the apple to Ostrer’s Newton; something that triggered an idea – an artistic practice whereby he started examining the contemporary obsession with endless consumption – of food, clothes and celebrity. “I’m fascinated by the advertising world and what drives us to want to purchase stuff,” he comments. “Like all the colours and tastes in junk food that have been highly synthesised in a way to attract us. They keep triggering our desire for consumption but without any satisfaction point. Two hundred years ago you had to work hard for a sweet taste: you’d climb a tree for honey. All you have to do now is get out of your car at the petrol station and grab a double Mars bar.”

Another creative spark for the series was Tony the Tiger, the cartoon mascot for Frosties cereal, being banned from children’s TV in 2007. “I thought: ‘Wow. Tony the Tiger’s a criminal. He works for the sugar drug cartels, and he’s been banned.’ I thought it was fascinating that you could ban a cartoon character from selling a product, but not ban [the] product [itself].”