DAVID HENRY DONALD
@flamigram
JOHN TRULLI
@christto_andrew
@thedrawingdoor
@decorhardcore
@verenasmit
LOUKIA ALAVANOU
The word “meme” was coined by the British biologist Richard Dawkins in 1976 to mean an “imitated thing.”
@gothshakira
EDOUARD TAUFENBACH
CHECKING INVOICES
@casafutura
ALEC SOTH
BENJAMIN LANGFORD
EMILIANO PONZI
EGE ISLEKEL
@johnyuyi
@cabbagecatmemes
PAULINA OLOWSKA
@november.wong
LESS
@pollynor
@asgercarlsen
AUSTIN LEE
@youvegotnomale
AMANDA CHARCHIAN
@johnyuyi
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OLAF BREUNING
For Dawkins, the word referred to pieces of language and culture that were transmitted across time and space, but the Internet has carried that idea of transmission to its extreme. Memes — images or animated GIFs, often with text splashed across them — are the common currency of social media, passed from user to user millions times a day. New memes constantly emerge and old ones remixed. It’s not just familiar standards like Grumpy Cat or Doge. Visual artists now create memes as a unique form of communication, seeding their ideas across the Internet. To launch the new Le Marché des Merveilles collection of watches, Gucci commissioned international artists curated by Alessandro Michele to develop original imagery. The images were then given to a new class of viral creators already famous on Twitter and Instagram to turn into new memes. The result is a curated collection of captioned art designed to help viewers express themselves online. Adapted from a popular meme, That Feeling When Gucci is about the moment of putting on one of the watches, when the world suddenly becomes different and time slows down a little bit. You might notice something new, as artist Olaf Breuning’s faces made from everyday objects suggest. Or your watch’s lion emblem just might roar, as Rozalina Burkova illustrates. John Yuyi shows how Internet icons can explode into the real world. Meme-makers like @williamcult and @beigecardigan create text for the images that brings them to life as digital artifacts. As Gucci’s memes spread across the Internet, they’ll reach new eyes and find new purposes. As Dawkins might have observed, it’s all about evolution.
@williamcult
@ddaviddonaldd
MEATWRECK
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@checking_invoices
@edouardtaufenbach
Christto & Andrew
WILLIAM CULT
GOTHSHAKIRA
@emilianoponzi
@blangblang92
@littlebrownmushroom
@loukiaalavanou
JOHN YUYI
VERENA SMIT
MARIANO PECCINETTI
YOUVEGOTNOMALE
@meatwreck
@egeislekel
POLLY NOR
@amanda_charchian
@marianopeccinetti
@austinlee
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@olafbreuning
ROZALINA BURKOVA
OLIMPIA ZAGNOLI
Kyle Chayka
DECORHARDCORE
FLAMINIA VERONESI
@paulinaolowska
ASGER CARLSEN
NOVEMBER WONG
@less_photo
Limbs merge, torsos twist, flesh morphs and transforms – the work of Danish-born, New York-based artist Asger Carlsen reminds us that the human body is a very strange place. A master of the uncanny, his signature black-and-white photographs often portray a mundane scene interrupted by a bizarrely-distorted figure, or a nude by way of David Cronenberg. It would almost be body horror but for the underlying sense of comic absurdity. This is highlighted for #TFWGucci by the mischievous @cabbagecatmemes, who brings a wry wit to Asger’s abstracted lump of muscles (or might it be a chicken wing?) and satirize the funhouse mirror of modern beauty standards Text: Samantha Culp
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ASGER CARLSEN @asgercarlsen
@ASGERCARLSEN
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ASGER CARLSEN
ASGER CARLSEN @asgercarlsen
Olaf Breuning
“Pareidolia” is the human tendency to see faces in inanimate objects or random patterns – very understandable, considering how our brains evolved to prioritize facial recognition. It’s become an obsession of Swiss-born, New York-based artist and provocateur Olaf Breuning, whose own Instagram feed has become a pareidolia deep-dive. Biscuits, toilets, kitchen utensils and soccer balls all become faces peering out of the screen, often with captions that carry Breuning’s trademark dark humor. For #TFWGucci, he assembles a special selection where the Le Marché des Merveilles watch helps animate an utterly shocked sweater, and a very laid-back elephant-leaf fern. Text: Samantha Culp
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@olafbreuning
The young American painter Austin Lee is a double-citizen of both the digital and analogue worlds. His squishy, day-glo designs start their lives as iPad sketches, which then travel through Photoshop, printers, and acrylic to eventually exit as tangible canvases. Often reality is re-imported back into bytes for him to further tweak his uncanny neon figures and sly sense of humor, as in his latest works with augmented-reality and 3D printed sculpture. For #TFWGucci, Lee’s candy-colored yuppie character gets a side-eye from queen of deadpan-glam @GothShakira. Text: Samantha Culp
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ASGER CARLSEN @asgercarlsen
@austinleee
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Austin Lee
ASGER CARLSEN @asgercarlsen
John Yuyi
Archaeologists estimate that humans have been tattooing themselves and each other for about 12,000 years, but John Yuyi has updated this ritual for the social media age. The Taipei-born, New York-based artist first became an Instagram sensation for applying her Facebook profile as a temporary tattoo on her own face, reflecting our complex relationship to online expression, identity, and desire for approval. This series expanded to include “likes”, messages, avatars and logos, inking our very flesh, even temporarily, with the digital structures we inhabit and are now a part of us. John Yuyi shows how aesthetic taste and desire (here for the Le Marché des Merveilles watch) is more than skin deep. Text: Samantha Culp
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@johnyuyi
Acclaimed Polish artist Paulina Olowska isn’t afraid of the past; it’s her prime obsession. Growing up in the 1980s, she witnessed first-hand Poland’s transition from communism to capitalism, and ever since has explored the personal and political meanings of memory and change. First as a painter, and now in various media from collage to performance, she remixes history, often taking inspiration from archival materials such as Soviet-era fashion postcards (as in her series “Applied Fantastic”). For #TFWGucci, she updates this series, with the help of a caption by the equally retro-minded @williamcult (aka designer William Ndatila). Nostalgia can be a weapon, if you hold it right. Text: Samantha Culp
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ASGER CARLSEN @asgercarlsen
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Paulina Olowska
ASGER CARLSEN @asgercarlsen
Christto & Andrew
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@christto_andrew
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As part of a new generation of future-forward Gulf creativity, Christto & Andrew is a dynamic international duo making eye-popping images from their studio in Doha, Qatar. Christto Sanz and Andrew Weir hail from Puerto Rico and South Africa, respectively, but came together in 2012 to collaborate on bold photography and moving images that challenge perceptions about the Middle East, blending traditional symbols with jewel-toned surrealism. For #TFWGucci, they introduce us to a mysterious fashionista who holds a flaming rose while she casually checks her Le Marché des Merveilles watch. In the words of the viral but never basic @beigecardigan, she’s just too fire to waste time. Text: Samantha Culp
ASGER CARLSEN @asgercarlsen
(@amanda_charchian
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The work of LA-based artist Amanda Charchian is characterized by her uniquely female-focused approach to the Surrealist tradition. With mysterious, witchy characters—think a crystal-incrusted spider sculpture that trembles in the wind, or a circle of ginger women linked together by their braided hair—they’re impossible to forget. It’s no wonder that her career spans both the fine art and commercial fashion world, and has included both gallery shows and editorial commissions for Vogue Italia. Her collaborative meme with the hilarious @textsfromyourexistentialist creates a feminine duo: sensual, funny, and unapologetic as ever, with an underlying darkness from the eponymous philosophy. Text: Tatiana Berg
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Amanda Charchian
ASGER CARLSEN @asgercarlsen
@littlebrownmushroom
Documentary photographer Alec Soth is known for his melancholic images that capture small-town landscapes and people. Born and raised in Minneapolis and following in the tradition of American photographers like William Eggleston, Soth’s career has taken him all over the world but has always maintained a distinctly Midwestern perspective. With a sly wit, his bare-bones memes have the same creative focus that makes him an art-world social media favorite. His Instagram account @littlebrownmushroom is a playful mix of his latest photos, funny screencaps, and cryptic text message exchanges, and his sharp take on the Gucci watch — conceived of and photographed solely by Soth himself — would fit right in on both Reddit and the runway. Text: Tatiana Berg
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Alec Soth
ASGER CARLSEN @asgercarlsen
@Thedrawingdoor
Bulgarian illustrator Rozalina Burkova’s boldly graphic works are fresh, ambitious, and urgently contemporary. This London-based artist has her finger firmly on the pulse of every possible “that feeling when” meme moment you might encounter. The excitement—and romance-level devotion—that a new Gucci watch inspires is no exception. With a goofy painterly sensibility that speaks to of-the-moment figurative artists like Joshua Abelow, her sardonic drawings are the perfect compliment to the one-liners that @gothshakira and @mytherapistsays are known for, which accompany her illustration here. Text: Tatiana Berg
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Rozalina Burkova
ASGER CARLSEN @asgercarlsen
Polly Nor
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@pollynor
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Polly Nor is a one-woman meme machine. With her focus on women, demons, and the societal sexism that consistently portrays them as inextricably linked, her twitchy drawings have the kind of hilarious insights that makes you want to hit “like” and then be her best friend. She reclaims devilry as powerfully feminine. (Her idea of the perfect funeral hymn? “Glamorous” by Fergie, feat. Ludacris.) If you’ve ever promised yourself you’d start saving up like a responsible adult only to blow it off when faced with an accessory you can’t resist, Polly Nor is the artist for you. Text: Tatiana Berg
ASGER CARLSEN @asgercarlsen
@verenasmit
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Brazilian artist Verena Smit brings a cinematic sensibility to her wide-ranging photography and illustration practice. Stark black-and-white high-contrast images are her trademark, coupled with a poetic voice and a languid approach to visual storytelling that is firmly Minimalist while retaining a luxurious sensibility. Her commitment to monochromatic palettes, perhaps more than anything, stands out in the colorful Sao Paulo visual arts scene in which she works. Smith's Gucci memes continue in that vein with two images that are mysterious yet universal, echoing art history via John Baldessari’s riff on Goya’s “Disasters of War” series. The dark meets the darkly compelling. Text: Tatiana Berg
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Verena Smit
Illustration powerhouse Emiliano Ponzi is the perfect artist to reinterpret the nose-pressed-against-the-glass meme convention with his sweet, storybook aesthetic. Ponzi’s illustration career has taken him from The New Yorker to Le Monde with visual storytelling. Here, he riffs on the iconic Kermit meme, but turns the frog into a bunny, itchy with impatience waiting for the Le Marché des Merveilles watch to arrive. @Mytherapistsays delivers the laconic caption to the meme, capturing our anticipation. Text: Tatiana Berg
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ASGER CARLSEN @asgercarlsen
@emilianoponzi
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Emiliano Ponzi
Multidisciplinary artist November Wong has done everything from sculpture to digital illustration. Her work is defined by her fascination with architecture and her international background, ranging through seven countries from Vancouver and Rome to Beijing. She’s brought home a little something from each. Whatever her medium, from graphic design to demanding performance, Wong’s challenging conceptual work always revolves around issues of body image — the representation of the female form, sometimes against the male. Playing on the relentless pace of fashion, Wong gets us excited for the Chinese New Year of 2022, the Year of the Tiger. It pairs especially nicely with the tiger of the Gucci Le Marché des Merveilles watch. Text: Tatiana Berg
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ASGER CARLSEN @asgercarlsen
@November.wong
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November wong
ASGER CARLSEN @asgercarlsen
@marianopeccinetti
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Argentine musician and collage artist Mariano Peccinetti wants nothing more than to open a portal into your subconscious. Employing the technique of collage in a post-Internet aesthetic, Peccinetti scours old magazines to find ways to superimpose the human onto the divine. The result? Meme-ified works of surrealism that simultaneously evoke Dalì and newspaper comics. The artist makes Le Marché des Merveilles timepieces seem right at home on lions and giraffes in outer space. Another watch is even orbiting like a Gucci moon. Captions by @cabbagecatmemes, AKA John Trulli, animate the collages and give the animals internal (social) lives. Text: Helen Holmes
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Mariano Peccinetti
The German artist collective Decorhardcore, which was born out of a desire to collect and curate strange pictures of furniture, is a creative endeavor run by magpie documentarians. Founder Ksenia Shestakovski and her collaborators make art that renders fantasy tangible, and they do so by offering up starkly lit images of seemingly mundane artifacts like hotel beds, antique lamps, and elaborate doilies. The collective’s Gucci pictures, haunting and memorable, are reminiscent of commercial furniture store catalogues: every vivid color and sharp corner oozes frenetic anticipation. @Beigecardigan turns the images into memes that reflect back on the fashion world, where supposed ugliness can often become beauty. Text: Helen Holmes
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ASGER CARLSEN @asgercarlsen
@decorhardcore
Decorhardcore
ASGER CARLSEN @asgercarlsen
Loukia Alavanou was born in Greece, studied in London, and lives in Belgium. In 2007, she won the Greek DESTE Prize for her work that often incorporates historical artifacts into multimedia videos. Here, Alavanou mingles past and present with vintage photographs that have been collaged with Gucci’s lion emblem, creating a composite artwork. Fashion, after all, is timeless — whatever your watch says. Text: Kyle Chayka
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ALAVANOU & KAROUK
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ASGER CARLSEN @asgercarlsen
@checking_invoices
This anonymous Milan-based collective is composed of a stylist, photographer, and video-maker. The result of their collaboration is a parade of also-anonymous figures — dressed in monochrome bodysuits, or with their heads blocked out — cavorting in the world of fashion. Here, one of the figures is cloaked in a Gucci bag, hiding their identity, but with three Le Marchè des Mérveilles timepieces on their wrist. @Youvegotnomale completes the image with a caption. What matters more, who you are or what you’re wearing? Text: Kyle Chayka
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CHECKING INVOICES
Less is a Korean artist who narrowed his focus to taking pictures because “moments which seemed difficult for me to experience were kept within photographs” — the image is a way to understand the world. Less’s aesthetic is frenetic and bright; the bodies he documents are always moving, caught in the midst of action. Less also shoots empty rooms and still life compositions, as in his Gucci Le Marché des Merveilles images. The two mugs seem to be holding hands around the timepiece, hinting at a living narrative. Derek Lucas contributed the image’s caption. Text: Helen Holmes
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ASGER CARLSEN @asgercarlsen
@less_photo
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LESS
A student at the iconic Slade School of Fine Art in London, David Henry Donald is a sculptor whose work often takes the form of small assemblages, a kind of three-dimensional collage, reminiscent of the boxes of Joseph Cornell. His work often reflects ideas of place and identity, taking on the view of the awed tourist as well as the knowledgeable local. Here, the Gucci watch is a familiar symbol tweaked by the trompe l’oeil turning page. Text: Kyle Chayka
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ASGER CARLSEN @asgercarlsen
@ddaviddonaldd
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DAVID HENRY DONALD
On the Internet, social networks provide our everyday vernacular, creating endless archives of images that might be entertaining, disturbing, or titillating. Meatwreck, a collaboration between artists Mitra Saboury and Derek Paul Boyle, jumps directly into the digital stream, enlivening it with their own blend of organic and surreal imagery. A foot sprouts plants, a piece of meat is framed, or a woman sleeps between mattresses instead of on top. Inspired by @beigecardigan, the duo pictures a Le Marchè des Mérveilles timepiece bursting out of the wearer’s suit. It just has to be seen. Text: Kyle Chayka
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ASGER CARLSEN @asgercarlsen
@MEATWRECK
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MEATWRECK
Derek Lucas, AKA @Champagneemojiis, was inspired by the super-recent Arthur meme — the cartoon aardvark represents utter frustration with a clenched fist. The New York-based photographer Benjamin Langford reinterpreted the meme through his own lens. Langford often shoots flowers with a languorous, detached gaze, printing them larger-than-life. They represent the elusive illusion of authentic experience, a tantalizing beauty never quite reachable. A Gucci watch on his wrist and a bunch of flowers in his fist, Arthur is still frustrated. Text: Kyle Chayka
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ASGER CARLSEN @asgercarlsen
@blangblang92
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Benjamin Langford
William Ndatila, fashion designer and creator of the label Cult11AD, has an aesthetic that’s darkly luxurious. His addictive Instagram feed ranges from memes to videos of upcoming DJs and images that are simply eerie or strange, curating a personal style from found digital material. For the Le Marché des Merveilles timepiece, Ndatila found an artwork, the Italian Renaissance painter Agnolo Bronzino’s portrait of Eleonora di Toledo, created in 1560, and captioned it. This is an example of a reaction meme, an image that an Internet user could repost to express their own feelings. Here, Eleonora is disappointed in the quality of gifts from her potential suitor. Deploy at will. — @kchayka
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ASGER CARLSEN @asgercarlsen
@WILLIAMCULT
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WILLIAM NDATILA
Goth Shakira is a latinx artist based in Montreal whose Instagram meme account is inspired by Latin American style and queer culture. Mingling Spanish and English, Goth Shakira’s memes are collages with a message about feminism, freedom, and creativity. She consciously pushes the boundaries of memes into visual art, participating in panels and exhibitions that frame digital artifacts as just another, equally important part of physical culture. — @kchayka
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ASGER CARLSEN @asgercarlsen
@gothshakira
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GOTH SHAKIRA
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ASGER CARLSEN @asgercarlsen
Olimpia Zagnoli is an Italian artist who spends her time scouting and highlighting classical Milanese houses, evaluating their aesthetics on her account @casafutura. Sometimes, she even writes fake listings. Here, Zagnoli created miniature homes for the imagination to inhabit. In her little universes, the Gucci Le Marché des Merveilles timepieces themselves become the central characters. Zagnoli’s meme comes in the form of her Instagram captions, which narrate absurdist real estate listings. Text: Helen Holmes
@casafutura
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Olimpia Zagnoli / Casafutura
Sebastian Tribbie Matheson is a ruthless meme maker. The snark starts with his account’s name. In between taking selfies and posting them to his 40,000 followers on Instagram, he creates images that take aim at popular fashion and social culture. No target is safe, from ordering on Seamless to cliche emoji usage. Here, Sebastian uses the starter pack meme, in which a group of images and objects are clustered together to represent the stereotype of a particular style or personality. He takes on Gucci itself, adopting the brands recent hallmarks, like embroidery, patches, and ‘70s glasses. Hari Nef and Petra Collins make appearances, as does the Le Marché des Merveilles timepiece. Gucci = owned. — @kchayka
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ASGER CARLSEN @asgercarlsen
@youvegotnomale
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Sebastian Tribbie Matheson
John Trulli, AKA @cabbagecatmemes, takes on the well known-structure of the “guy she says I shouldn’t worry about” meme with the addition of a Gucci timepiece. It’s a classic two-panel joke, with the mundane watch set against Gucci’s rather more ornate version. Trulli’s meme style tends to be quirky and irreverent, tackling pop culture and everyday experiences in equal measure. All he has to do is add a line of text to the image and it becomes a viral vehicle. — @kchayka
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ASGER CARLSEN @asgercarlsen
@cabbagecatmemes
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John Trulli
Flaminia Veronesi is an Italian artist and designer who lives and works in Paris. She cycles through several different media, including water-color painting and sculpture, and her Gucci collaboration is similarly hands-on. Rather than pasting pictures in a digital landscape, Veronesi preferred to sculpt clay figures in this artwork: an outstretched hand, clad with rings and a Gucci timepiece, reaches out to touch a statue’s lovely face. Recreated from a Gucci campaign shoot, the end result is sweet, sad, and not a little lonely, like a Giorgio de Chirico painting. Meme by the Internet culture-savvy @cabbagecatmemes. Text: Helen Holmes
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ASGER CARLSEN @asgercarlsen
@flamigram
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FLAMINIA VERONESI
The Milan-based Turkish artist Ege Islekel appropriates sculptures and paintings from art history in order to make his graphic works. They are both referential and completely contemporary, delighting in the collision of popular culture and fine art. As a visual joke, Islekel often superimposes van Gogh’s visage over famous album covers. His Gucci memes play with Neo-Classicist paintings, brought to life by captions from @youvegotnomale and Derek Lucas that namecheck art history as well as 21st century romance. Text: Helen Holmes
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ASGER CARLSEN @asgercarlsen
EGE ISLEKEL
@egeislekel
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ASGER CARLSEN @asgercarlsen
edouard taufenbach
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@edouardtaufenbach
The collage artist Edouard Taufenbach, who lives and works in Paris, takes a serialized tack when constructing his kaleidoscopic, hand-glued collections of photographs. By arranging dozens of copies of the same picture in vivid, fanned-out patterns, Taufenbach creates a flip-book effect reminiscent of photographer Eadweard Muybridge’s early shots of captured motion. The artist’s take on the Gucci brand is nostalgic, winsome, and abstract, less about the products themselves than the timeless but always relevant Gucci attitude. Interpreting the images, @cabbagecatmemes (John Trulli) finds a commentary on waiting for friends to go out one night. Text: Helen Holmes
