Visitors to Times Square in New York might have recently spotted a secret message planted by the artist Patrick Amadon on one of the huge billboards that overlook the public plaza. The multimedia artist was commissioned by the LG Art Lab company to make the work last month marking the launch of its blockchain-backed online art market platform. Amadon gladly agreed to the commission… slipping into the very public NY work the Wikipedia page for “Gaza genocide”, which flashed briefly between frames of a pair of blinking eyes. But how did LG Art Lab respond?
“To LG’s credit, they didn’t know this was coming but they not only didn’t take it down, they said they support controversial art and artistic expression,” Amadon tells us. The maverick has form at slipping subversive messages into public pieces; last year his digital billboard in Hong Kong incorporated the names of jailed activists who opposed the controversial 2020 security law.