Slava Mogutin

Slava Mogutin, From the series: “Stock Boyz”, archival inkjet prints on newspaper mounted on canvas board

Stock Boyz is a series of inkjet prints of anonymous nude figures appropriated from various, mostly Eastern European, Internet porn sites and printed on stock charts pages from The New York Times.  I started this series shortly before the devastating market crash of September 2008 in the U.S., using the charts’ graphics as an abstract background.  Initially I thought of this series as a commentary on commodification of youth in our consumerist society.  However, after the crash, it gained a whole new, sinister meaning.  As economy kept getting worse, the numbers and graphics kept on changing dramatically.

I continued collecting the charts and making new Stock Boyz, giving them names made of current headlines: Small Capitalization, Most Active, Slow Growth, Total Volume, Behind and Ahead, Gainers and Losers, New Highs and Lows, etc.  While the headlines, stripped off their actual meaning, sounded frivolous and suggestive, the boys’ exposed fragile bodies, taken out of sexual context, slowly dissolved into an ocean of cruel digits.  Bit by bit, they got swallowed by capitalist greed and over-indulgence.