New Utopias #2 is a screen print by British artist Miles Aldridge. In his series ‘New Utopia’, Miles Aldridge attempts to explore the collision of popular culture with so-called serious art by elevating the smiling model advertising new gadgets to the status of the goddesses depicted in the Renaissance. His photographs look like paintings viewed from a distance, but are reminiscent of the pages of magazines in close-up. The technique of screen printing is ideally suited to this task and allows for large-format prints consisting of the colored halftone dots characteristic of magazine printing. The additional use of silver ink emphasizes the various products, which simultaneously refer to the use of gold leaf in Renaissance altarpieces and are part of the visual language of Pop Art. The New Utopias are the apotheosis of modern life; divine and banal. The everyday is full of seriousness and the profound is only a moment away from mockery.

The exhibition “Virgin Mary. Supermarkets. Popcorn” with artworks by Miles Aldridge opens in Berlin in February 2024. The Brit has been one of the most sought-after international fashion photographers since the 1990s and achieved fame through his highly stylized, psychedelic style with quotes from film, art history and pop culture.
Miles Aldridge’s elaborately staged images are reminiscent of film sets. Immaculately smooth surfaces and stereotypical femininity enhance the artificial effect of the images, which are rendered in a palette of rich and shimmering hues and all photographed on film. Nothing is represented on the computer; all the photographed motifs have been recreated in the studio.