WHEN WE LIE WE LOOSE A BIT OF OURSELVES AND REPLACE IT WITH EVERYONE ELSE
At a funeral it is the custom to lie about the dead person and his/her life to the extent it’s no longer possible to identify the body. Even after death we live a lie.

Cameron Hayes
When You Lie You Loose a Bit of Yourself and Replace it with a Bit of Everyone Else, 2016
oil on linen
60 x 72 inches
photo: Vince Ruvolo
courtesy the artist and Ronald Felmdan Gallery, New York

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A woman reads from a prepared eulogy- nothing lies like a eulogy – the mourners listening to it are trying to make sense of its parts and are trying to re-assemble the dead body is like trying to put together an IKEA table but they are confused by the contradictions and implausibility of the life they were hearing about and the life they thought they knew  . Above them a couple sit exasperated holding an allen key and IKEA directions to a table with pieces that don’t look like they belong to a table.

In the centre of the picture there is a marriage cake, both bride and groom have already taken pieces out of the wedding cake and replaced the pieces with other bits of cheaper cake to hide their theft. For the sake of the wedding the couple walk down the isle already missing pieces of themselves in an attempt to accommodate their partner. The bride’s leg is replaced by a bike wheel her arm is a crutch, the grooms head a rubbish bag. The bridal gown’s train catches bits of the couple as they walk and two groomsmen trail behind with wheelbarrows to collect and reattach the couples missing bits

marriage cake

Some people lie so much that they become empty sacks    – scarecrows.  Their loved ones hunt around with lie detectors trying to find the lost bits of them in an attempt to refill real parts of them back into life. A giant public lie detector is used by many desperate people who dance around the lie detector in adoration with personal objects wired to it that they know wont lie to them ; pet rabbit, pot plant, golf club…ect..

A man with his pants down is thrown out of what looks like a public toilet, only to realize the cubicals are selling computers and the toilets are computers. Dogs are also fooled into thinking what looks like a park is a park-  it is really a plant shop. A pet shop is made to look like a police station, market research is made to look like a school and a bed and furniture shop is made to look like a hospital. The beauty shop looks like a church with statues of Mary and Jesus replaced with six packed models .Art museums are fronts for gift shops. Even buildings are actively lying.

Loose bits of people are clogging up the streets and garbage men use people’s empty outsides as bin bags to clean up the mess, they throw the body bags into the dump truck and take the bits of people to the bucket factory. At the bucket factory bits of people are melted into plastic and moulded into empty plastic buckets so they can re-roam the streets waiting to be filled with lies and deceit. People are born as originals and die as copies

“By a lie a man annihilates his dignity as a man” – Kant. At the job interview applicants are seated in front of giant posters of shapes they are expected to fit into ,they are given the waiting time to self-mutilate so as to fit the required shapes they loose and gain body parts while trying not to drop the CV’s they brought from the lobby vending machines. Those long term unemployed have no uninjured parts of their body left and only their heads emerge from their bandaged bodies rolled around on wheelchairs

“There is in the world only the choice between loneliness and vulgarity” –  Schopenhauer .In the background cars are dressed up as aeroplanes – the lies we tell ourselves about the things we are going to do. The cars drive to the ethnic restaurants to who’s countries we will lie about going to and then to films who’s books we will lie about reading. Also in the background are cardboard skyscrapers populated by a single angry man with a computer who tells himself 1. That he has something important to say and 2. That everyone will agree with him if only they understood him. These skyscrapers have names like ; The Institute of… and The Coalition for …. and The Committee for…. and The People Against…..