Cowboy (2025)

Hi-resolution inkjetprint, Aludibond, pigmented epoxy resin
Dimensions: 150 cm x 120 cm
Year: 2025

The source material of Cowboy is a smartphone photo of an iconic advertisement for a well-known cigarette brand. In the 1970s and 1980s, advertising campaigns in print magazines were ubiquitous and highly influential. The Marlboro cigarette brand advertised exclusively using the figure of the American cowboy. Artists such as Richard Prince responded artistically to the clichés of a rural American identity—one of masculinity and heroism—conveyed by the advertisements. Several actors and models who appeared as the “Marlboro Man” in the famous campaigns later died from the effects of smoking. Undoubtedly inspired in part by this campaign, the narrative of the healthy rural person who embraces nature and the countryside remains, to this day, an important part of right-wing back-to-nature movements.

Cowboy is part of Joachim Blank’s G.E.O. series.