Love Of My Life

This work by Gumm depicts a crushed soda can featuring the iconic Marilyn Monroe, the celebrated subject of one of Andy Warhol's most famous works. Marilyn, one of the greatest movie stars, here becomes not only a symbol of pop culture, but also of a consumer good that, in Gumm's vision, degrades and loses its original value. The can, deformed and emptied, represents waste, suggesting a parallel between contemporary culture and the way even high-profile figures like Marilyn are transformed into mass-produced objects, diminishing their symbolic and artistic value.
Gumm, through the use of the can, seems to denounce the cultural decay we live in, where even cinema, once considered a noble art, is being trivialized and commercialized to the point of becoming a shelf product. The image of Marilyn Monroe, which Warhol made a symbol of pop art, is here "printed" onto an object destined to be consumed and discarded. This gesture transforms the icon into something almost kitsch, emptying her figure of meaning and reducing her to a simple "testimonial" for a commercial product.
The crushed can, a symbol of waste and consumption, thus becomes a metaphor for the degradation and trivialization of culture. The subject, once glorified as a symbol of beauty and movie stardom, is emptied of its lofty significance and loses its original value. Gumm uses this device to reflect on the fate of icons in our contemporary society: what was once celebrated as art or high entertainment is now reduced to a mere consumer object, destined to end up in the trash.