Chapter 6: Marty Robbins Biggest Hits

Jeremy Shaw’s chapter of The Manifest Destiny Billboard Project, entitled Marty Robbins Biggest Hits, employed the traditional advertising trope of repetition, with all 10 billboards scattered throughout the El Paso, TX area displaying the same image. Using this strategy, the image was imprinted in the minds of commuters, drawing connections between the disparate locations of the billboards while attempting to incite a slippage of time via the pseudo-advertisement’s authenticity, or lack thereof.

Reconfiguring the 1982 Biggest Hits album cover of legendary country and western music star Marty Robbins, Shaw created a faux-promotional campaign for the release to the population of El Paso, TX, the namesake city of Robbins’ most iconic single. “El Paso” has been used repeatedly in popular culture since its initial release in 1959; the song was most recently noted for its metaphorical connections to the overall plot of the hit television show Breaking Bad, and was featured in the series’ finale episode, also named after the song’s protagonist’s tragic love interest, Felina. The narrative of “El Paso” references the Texas landscape and local haunts (specifically Rosa’s Cantina) and epitomizes a storied outlaw romance, embodying the fantasy of the American Wild West and associated nostalgia. Shaw’s billboard series once again re-inserts Robbins and his music into the present while adhering to the original design of the 1982 compilation (notably that it is “also on cassette”) in an attempt to blur our perception of time and its passing. Advertising an album from a bygone era, Marty Robbins Biggest Hits resurfaces in the present day, not only linking past moments, but refocusing our view on changes – both positive and negative – within those interim passages of time.

Jeremy Shaw (b.1977, Vancouver, BC) is a Berlin-based artist known for multimedia works that focus on altered states. His chapter of  The Manifest Destiny Billboard Project is directly linked to a current, ongoing series of public poster projects that reprint and reinstall decontextualized advertisements of the recent past.

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SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES AND PLACES OF INTEREST:

OPENING WEEKEND

Please join us in celebrating the launch of Chapter #6: Jeremy Shaw and
Chapter #7: Daniel R. Small with a panel discussion, reception, and historical site visit

Friday, January 23, 2015

Panel with Jeremy Shaw, Daniel R. Small, and Shamim M. Momin
6:00pm
Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts
The University of Texas at El Paso
500 West University Avenue
El Paso, TX 79968
Rubin Center is located at Dawson Road at Sun Bowl Drive, at the south end of the Sun Bowl Stadium

Reception at Rosa’s Cantina
7:30pm-9:30pm
3454 Doniphan Drive
El Paso, TX 79922

Saturday, January 24, 2015

Billboard-sighting trip to Las Cruces, NM for Daniel R. Small’s billboards
Departing from Rosa’s Cantina at 11am

Lunch at the Double Eagle in Historic Old Mesilla
12:30pm
2355 Calle De Guadalupe
Mesilla, NM 88046

Visit to White Sands National Park for the “Sunset Stroll”
4:30pm
Meet the ranger 5 miles inside the park next to the “Sunset Stroll” sign
19955 U.S. 70
Alamogordo, NM 88310

This project was made possible with an award from the National Endowment for the Arts: Art Works and with support from Clear Channel Outdoor El Paso.  Special thanks to the Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts at The University of Texas at El Paso.