(Also, because I want to make some extra bank as one of my courses at SVA was cancelled this semester due to low enrollment. While I wasn’t thrilled, I must say its nice to get a break from lecturing six hours in a row, which has been my Thursdays for a long time now. Not a big deal, but being free at 3PM and in the city is rare for me and I’m enjoying it.)

Something so engaging and real about being on the sidewalk meeting and talking to all kinds of people, eye to eye…SO glad i did it:) And was so happy to have my neighbor-longtime friend hang with me all day, from beginning to end, helping me set up and take down! How fucking sweet is that?! AM SO GRATEFUL. Of course I kept trying to foist stuff on her, lol, in gratitude – and I had great stuff out there, from Gunne Sax to Leslie Fay to Ungaro, with lots of great 1960s-70s stuff, which she loves. But she only took a couple things. I also think she enjoyed it too, the human side of it reminding her of her retail/record store days in San Francisco in the early 1990s.

I was surprised how little people knew about what they were looking at. I thought with all the young blood in Greenpoint and the popularity of all things “vintage” there’d be more cultivated tastes out there. My biggest sale, who also has an Etsy shop, being an exception. Regardless, the fact that people just bought things because they liked them was also cool!

I do though wonder if I’ve just acquired more expertise than I realize (to justify my endless thrifting, no doubt), or if there’s no desire for expertise anymore as “vintage” simply means “second-hand” now. Ie, its just all “old”. I’ve always taken it quite seriously thanks to gay male friends who schooled me back in the day (some cliches are true), but that’s when very few did the vintage thing, and everyone had a niche.

Anyway, I’ll be uploading new stuff on romanlovesgigi (my Etsy shop again soon), and perhaps doing more street sales (next time with biz cards for my shop), so stay tuned!

(Btw, if you didn’t catch my show, From the Ruins…, it got great reviews, meaty thoughtful ones, in the New Yorker, artforum.com, Time Out New York, the Brooklyn Rail, PAPER, and observer.com so Google that shit! Pretty damn grateful for that still too!!! And I’m excited to be working on some other projects! this amazing Fall weather on the east coast, and look out for the giant red moon Sunday nite!!)

some super quick pics from the iphone…(I am laughing that I threw in curlers I never used and nail polish: classy, lol!)

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It occurred to me that this image/still of Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver, 1976, did for the 20th century what Manet’s Olympia, 1863, did for the 19th: confront society with its ultimate sham-muse; the idealized whore. Or courtesan no-more. Manet did it by attacking art history’s tradition of the reclining nude, and showing what a sham all that allegorical pretense really was.
Édouard Manet’s Olympia, 1863

Paul Schrader’s construction of Iris, a 12-year junkie old prostitute too young to be jaded – so aptly called the Shirley Temple of the 1970s – does much the same, shorning her of her innocence (one must be an adult to consent, right?) in order to skewer sexual mores. Both managed to titillate and shock through resolutely abject visions, and yet both succeeded in their bids for fame  . Manet has become part of the canon, and Taxi Driver is undoubtably a classic as well. Both also came from repressed families. Here’s some excerpts from an interview with Schrader who talks about this, along with the film:

“I had no intention of being involved in the motion-picture business; I backed into it. It began when I was at Calvin College, a seminary in Michigan. I became interested in movies because they were not allowed. This was the era of The Seventh Seal and La Strada, and I saw that movies could fit into the religious structure of the school and provide a bridge between my religious training and the forbidden world. Movies were forbidden in our church by a synodical decree of 1928 which defined them as a “worldly amusement,” along with card-playing, dancing, smoking, drinking, and so on. I snuck off to see my first movie, The Absent-Minded Professor, which I’d been blackmailed into seeing by watching The Mickey Mouse Club.

When I was in New York, I was feeling particularly blue in a bar at around three A.M. I noticed a girl and ended up picking her up. I should have been forewarned when she was so easy to pick up; I’m very bad at it. The only reason I tried it that night is that I was so drunk. I was shocked by my success until we got back to my hotel and I realized that she was: (1) a hooker; (2) under age; and (3) a junkie. Well, at the end of the night I sent Marty a note saying: “Iris is in my room. We’re having breakfast at nine. Will you please join us?” So we came down, Marty came down, and a lot of the character of Iris was rewritten from this girl who had a concentration span of about twenty seconds. Her name was Garth.”

Manet’s Olympia (a common name for prostitutes at the time, btw) was modeled by Victorine Meurent, an artist who modeled for many of Paris’s demimonde. Meurent though, was much younger, and poorer than her aristocratic male “peers”. The story of Schrader with Garth/Iris is much the same in terms of the exploitive older male exercising his prerogative. Which is exactly what both call attention to, if unwittingly,as they do implicate themselves I think, consciously or otherwise. Though as the Guardian piece linked above makes clear, the abjection still resides in the woman:

“But while Meurent’s contribution was recognised by Manet’s friends, her willingness to pose naked made her a notorious figure to the general public, undermining her hopes of being taken seriously.”

Posing nude made her a prostitute for all intents and purposes then, anyway.  Interestingly, it didn’t seem to deter her from wanting to continue her pursuit of painting anymore than it did Foster with acting. The later even talks about how proud she is to have been part of Taxi Driver. 

In 1932 Paul Valéry wrote of Olympia, “She bears dreams of all the primitive barbarism and animal ritual hidden and preserved in the customs and practices of urban prostitution”, which applies just as well to Iris.

In the end, Manet and Schrader send-ups to the notion of the ideal “whore” underscore all this projected fantasy. That, and the fact that what is particularly abject exists because there is such demand. Something to mull over more, I think…

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So that led to me this short documentary, where I discovered he’s not only still alive and kickin’, but just produced a new record with two avid young musician fans, white boys, AKA “the sticks” (attached within link via soundcloud). As in Ironing Board Sam & the Sticks. Yes, pretty fucking funny name. Also awkward. Let’s just hope he gets paid. We can all help by listening and coughing up, ourselves. I’m just as guilty as anyone else. How do you refuse free? Its hard. I felt guilty for watching the doc on vimeo. We can all do better, esp. those of us who empathize. Am I right?

Regardless, I’m smitten with Ironing Board Sam’s electrifying gritty sound. Makes me wanna bounce! I so wish I could’ve lived in the era when people went out to dance practiced styles. I’ve often fantasized about being a professional dancer, the love of, along with singing, coming from my dad. He taught me the box step when I was about 5. My little feet placed on top of his as we moved across a sea of oriental rug. How cute is that? My daddy was the swinging-ist. 

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SO, I decided to watch Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, a film I’ve wanted to watch again.  I love Lynch’s work, and watching, I was reminded how much his aesthetic evokes David Cronenberg. And Viola! I’m not the only one!. Makes me wonder if there’s a female counterpart director – so insanely wrong that women directors are still so goddamn rare these days…But back to the film (for me, that is), which I highly recommend! Here’s a pic of the ever-fab Ann Miller channeling perfect 60s SoCal grooviness as Mrs. Coco Lenoix! I want to recreate that hair look somehow…

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Just click on this link to a live show from 2013, scroll through the images, and imagine your own jumpsuit line. The images gathered here, btw, are from one of usual my late nite hunts on Ebay/Etsy. If you’re tiny enough, the two actual garments shown here are, I think, still available online (Google search ’em). As always, ENJOY. Here’s a pic of the band, too.

And BTW, if you’re in NYC, check out the exhibition I curated, From the Ruins…info. here! I will write more about that another time, but its why I’ve been too busy, along with end of semester crap, and the show’s programming, which included a great performance by the inimitable M Lamar on the 21st, reviewed by PAPER (yay!), and an upcoming screening/talk with Jane & Louise Wilson on June 27th (all info. on the above link). HAPPY ALMOST SUMMER!

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I remember getting out of bed really late one night, around the age of 11-12, with a flashlight at the ready, to tune in to a rare radio interview with Neil Young I was supposed to be sleeping through. Pressing my ear against the radio, swooning in some nocturnal communion with this man I’d begun to revere. The influence of an older brother.  My obsession continued through high school, and this is humiliating, so never bring it up in person, haha!, but I used to sign yearbooks with “Neil Young is #1!” LOL. And my nickname with my BFF, Maria, was “Cinneman Girl” (hers was Wild Child, after The Doors). Watching archival footage like this live BBC show from 1971 would’ve made me cream my panties back then; that long hair, willowy silhouette and awkward prettiness was so sexy.  I’m actually crushing all over again watching and listening to him!! And OF COURSE I memorized every word to every song:) so I can sing along. Check it out though as he’s uncharacteristically ebullient in this performance. Its sweet.

Anyway, I began to stray in the 1980s, always appreciating his desire to experiment and fail, the mark of a true artist, IMHO, and I bought Trans, 1982. but my sensibility shifted more post punk   By the early 2000s, I hardly ever played his music, it felt so wedded to that silly high school girl, a nostalgic thing.Then one day at The Carlyle, that famed hotel, after meeting with this tacky Sante Fe collector who wanted to hire me to “curate” something, there in the lobby was NEIL. Maybe 10 feet in front of me, leaving through the side door with his entourage. The obsessive fan possessed me again – fulfill your fantasy to meet him, was pushing myself – but I hesitated too long, too fearful that it would disturb him. Knowing he was such a private, taciturn guy. Eventually I followed them out onto the street where I caught a glimpse of him, sliding in his black suit into a dark sedan. I did ask one of his roadies, “Is that Neil?, what’s he in town for?” And he said, “yeah, its him, he’s here for an CSNY tour”.  A few years later I slept with this beautiful guy, 15 years younger, who I bonded with – much to my surprise! – over a love for Neil (and he had the whole pretty boy, long hair, tall and thin thing going on). I realized then that with the whole 1970s culture revival, which strangely hasn’t abated, a whole new fan base for Neil Young would grow. Now music critics say he took Dylan’s baton in the 1970s, already elevating his significance – revisionist history: I teach it, I live it, it heartens me.

Maybe its the strong political messages, and distrust of fame are finally resonating again with a new generation, instead of being relegated to mom rock (or should that be dad rock), a “genre” I first encountered on artist Juliana Huxtable’s FB post about Sleater Kinney. HILARIOUS. Anyway, a few days ago it was  announced wNeil Young, with a new band and Willie Nelsons sons (!!), was working on an “ANTI-MONSATO” album, and social media’s been abuzz ever since. A NME piece on it leads with a funny, flatfooted quote that’s so Neil: “No auto tune was used and no ears were harmed in the making”, but even Check out his recent album Storytone, which is like a prelude, at least in ts initial song, “Whose Gonna Stand Up” with lyrics like: “damn the dams save the rivers starve the takers feed the givers, stand up to oil, protect the plants,…whose going to stand up and the earth, whose gonna take on the big machine, this all starts with you and me”…there’s a solo version followed by a symphonic version, the latter an earnest plea with a Broadway tone that’s a wee goofy, and each song is given its orchestral version, btw, which is another classic foray of his into territory untread. the songs that follow are reminiscent of a sweeter, grandpa Neil. Its like he’s channeling Pete Seeger.

And FYI, I actually tried to photograph one of my year books, only to realize that my signature “Neil Young is #1!” would be found in someone else’s yearbook. What I did find though were some incredibly intimate and long “entries” by girlfriends (I went to an all girls’ Catholic high school) that were so touching. And serious! Full of darkness.  Rreminded me why particularly in my teens I was so attached to this man and his music. It was a real emotional attachment. I guess that’s what I wanted to convey to him in that split second siting in The Carlyle. It was always the moody and (alternately) rancorous sides of his work I liked best, I guess I instinctively responded to the emotion as well as the songwriting. In some ways, I always thought of him as father grunge.

December 1969, San Diego, California, USA — Neil Young plays his vintage Gretsch White Falcon during a sound check at Balboa Stadium just before a Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young concert. — Image by © Henry Diltz/CORBIS

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Nan Goldin: David at Grove Street, Boston, 1972, 1972;

black-and-white photograph; 18 3/4 x 12 5/8 in.; gift of the artist.

I have this vision of David during one of our visits in his Bed-Stuy home, sitting in a high-backed chair, smoking a Newport, gazing into the late day sun. It was July 11th, one of the hottest days on record, a heat wave with temperatures in the high 90s, the heat index in the 100s. He’d tried to cancel because of it, but I’d already gotten a cab before the email reached me. And there we sat on the second-floor of his 5-story brownstone where he shot many of the images in the book we were to talk about, filling the light-saturated room with our cigarette trails, talking of cats, sex, and poor health. And of course about the boys who inhabit his work, house, heart and mind.

A photographer long associated with “The Boston School,” a group of artist friends (Nan Goldin, Mark Morrisroe, and Jack Pierson, among them) who in the late 1970s developed a kind of snapshot aesthetic loosely defined by saturated color and raw intimate portraits, Armstrong has spent the last decade creating highly prized commercial work for fashion editorials, bringing to the glossies and the masses a doleful eye for beauty. The elegiac, often transcendent tone of his photographs, particularly the portraits of young male models captured in his latest monograph, 615 Jefferson Avenue (Damiani, 2011), taken before and after officially commissioned shoots, conveys more than mere beauty, however. Suffused with longing and an acute sense of the ephemeral, there is among the gorgeous young faces and carefully arranged tableaux, a feeling that time and memory are paradoxical twins, never in synch, but always connected.

Similarly, there is in the artist’s old-world manners and unironic love of glamour, a timeless appeal to the fugitive. Nevertheless, David is nothing if not candid, his words like his images steeped in an eloquence as forthright as it is often sad. A self-declared shut in, who prefers to spend most of his time at home, he is refreshingly unapologetic about behaviors others might find socially unacceptable. In a recent New York Timesinterview, for example, he openly concedes to drug use: “Jokingly, I [used to] say that if I reached 50, I would start doing everything again,” he said. “But it turned out I did. I started using again in 2002. Am I a functioning addict? I’m functioning enough.” It’s that candor and the tender love for a youth forever spent yet obsessively sought in the very rooms where we talked that led me to discuss with David the making of 615 Jefferson Avenue.

JH: The title of your book is the place where all the portraits in it were taken, but 615 Jefferson Avenue is clearly more than a number on a street. For anyone who’s had the pleasure to visit, or look carefully at the atmospheric lair that enshrines the pretty boys in your melancholic pics, your 5-story house smack in the middle of do-or-die Bed-Stuy, is a theatrical wonder of sprawling rooms and shifting light — as much a character in these works as the models themselves. Perhaps even a surrogate for yourself? How do you think your relationship to “home” has informed the images in the book?

DA: Faithful Jefferson Ave expresses more of me than I have the balls to in situ, and I thoroughly believe it stands as a faithful lieutenant to any with even a cunt hair of visual perception or emotional sensitivity. It’s more “me” than I am, mortgaging me rather than the reverse. I shall never escape the charms it holds, the resonance of all that’s happened here. Its fragile beauty and that of the light inhabiting its rooms and halls. I will never leave this place until the dark parade escorts me out. But yes, this house is definitely a prominent participant in any picture made here, and often in a manner beyond my control. This place is me, I’m in its possession.

JH: One of my favorite things about the house is the large, eccentric collection of stuff that you’ve amassed there. Moving through the maze-like corridors of its endless rooms, one sees all these groupings of objects where the Belle Epoque meets deshabille chic, arranged ephemerally on tables and under bell jars. I too obsessively collect shit, from cat whiskers and subway posters I steal to space age tchotchkes and vernacular pics, but there’s rarely any order. You manage to imbue these tableaux with a narrative and aesthetic potency such that many become sculpture/art. Does the process of arranging the different elements that comprise these more finished “works” mirror that of the boys you portray, arrange, and collect in your book?

DA: In fact, these processes mirror one another very little. Both bodies of work function as self-portraits but in such different ways. The piles of junk that take form over hours, days, months, and years furnish the one place where I still can work in an organic way, let something develop, contemplate it, then change it, add or subtract from it, move it or dismantle it. And more recently to sometimes say “that’s it, it’s done, there it is.” Very Mrs Dalloway.

JH: How then do the photos take form? And why are all the subjects young beautiful boys?

DA: The choice of subject, the time, the place, and then whatever evolves; mutations have occurred over the years but those fundamentals remain. I’m always scared before a portrait shoot the way you might be before an assassination. So much has to do with putting the person at ease, enough so they might open themselves to you in some small way. Jumping into the water is how I think about commencing any shoot. I honestly have no idea what i’m doing or where we’ll end up. As the only other participant, the sun can have as much to do with it all as either the model, the house, or myself. There’s an arc, it can be as short as an hour or as long as a day. In some cases, like the serial versions, it can go on for years with a single muse. Usually a point comes where I’m totally lost, the pictures are dictating themselves, I love that. There’s a climax and then you shoot a bit longer, wanting to cover yourself, though you know the moment’s passed. And all my subjects are not young beautiful boys. Glancing back I’d say for every four boys I’ve shot, I’ve shot a girl, in many cases much more interesting photographs. Also, I spent nearly five years primarily photographing places. Scalo published a monograph of these land and cityscapes, “All Day, Every Day” in 2002. And I’ve continued to make them until now.

I spent nearly four years working on a series of portraits of hustlers at Stella’s and the hotel Sherman directly preceding and overlapping the earliest of images in 615, none of them beautiful in the conventional sense, or all young for that matter. In my own estimation the best of my most recent work are interiors, images of this house, and my house in the country. Reshooting what are nearly two dimensional piles of other images, many of the tableaux of objects you spoke of earlier, and many just of rooms, windows doors, mirrors that change with the times of day and the seasons of the year. A lot of these were shown at Arles two summers ago when I’d just begun them. They continue to interest me more than anything else I’m currently doing. The selection of images in this book is obviously very specific and as I feared the idea behind it required a lot more clarification, but then you can never underestimate the stupidity of people. So what’s the diff?

JH: Lol. Well, in Ryan McGinley’s interview with you, he foregrounds your long-term friendship and relationship with Nan Goldin, a pivotal association others seem to systematically invoke as well. Does that ever get on your nerves — to have writers/curators/critics continuously fasten your work and its influence to Nan’s?

DA: No it doesn’t. I never would have picked up a camera had it not been for Nan. Beyond that nan and I brought each other up from the time we were 14, this isn’t folklore, it’s fact. We have a bond that for better or worse cannot be broken. We taught each other how to see in the confines of Harvard Square and Beacon Hill. Years later in Berlin her largesse allowed me the privilege of a post-graduate holiday that lasted for three years, affording me the freedom to do nothing other than relearn how to make images. And further still, had it not been for Nan no one would ever have seen the pictures I made. I remain in awe of her raw and staggering genius as a creator of images. I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to Nan. We share a love, the dynamic of which is strange to say the least, baroque even, but so are most friendships worth having. So yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

JH: Still, while the work shares a similar sensibility, there’s often a painterly, somber quality to your portraits (the boys never smile, for example) that recalls old masters, and distinguishes itself from Nan’s technicolor paeans to abject glamour through emotional restraint and sexual sublimation, wouldn’t you agree? What personal experiences and art historical references most account for this difference in tone, in your estimation?

DA: I think Nan’s photographs are primarily linked with painting in so far as her use of color running in perfect tandem to the content of the work, something not easy to pull off, and I don’t think intentional though undeniably true. As expressive as any other formal element to a painter is the use of color, the same is true of Nan. I’m not a good colorist and still pretty new to it. It took several years for me even to understand an image was working precisely because of the color. I think my pics also allude to painting, but more in terms of the use of line, compositional elements, and the handling of light. I generally find looking at paintings to be a far more transcendent experience… in the hierarchy of art forms, photography actually registers very low on my list, if at all. Henry Geldzahler once said we’d all be a lot better off if we realized photography was a hobby and not an art form. Had I not been the hapless fellow of 19 I was and had any courage, I’d have continued my pursuit of painting which is the reason I went to art school in the first place. But when all’s said and done, any good work of art needs to be judged on the amount of felt life it contains, painting or photo, mine or Nan’s, restrained or in your face, emotion is what it’s about. Of course that’s the world according to me, and judging from the mountains of crap being turned out these days, I’d say this notion of “art” was co-opted several decades ago. Sic transit gloria mundi..

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]]> http://www.janestown.net/2014/10/design-matters-sharpie-diy-kicks/ Mon, 20 Oct 2014 00:40:46 +0000 http://www.janestown.net/?p=4357 Here’s a small collection of hand-painted converse sneakers,  cool kicks – or trainers, as the Brits say – that I came across when listing a pair I own for my etsy shop, romanlovesgigi. The pattern – on mine – is an official company design, and as my description conveys, I love them, and lament that they’re too large (size 7):

‘These vintage Converse All Star slip ons are in EXCELLENT near mint condition. The painted canvas pattern is called “Stickers” but looks like anime cartoon comic book mash-up, a Pop Art, Andy Warhol style that are so skater kool. Wear them with skirts, dresses, skinny jeans, cut-offs, or even a suit. A one-of-a-kind as most of these are gone from the market. If they weren’t too big I’d be keeping them for myself, trust me, they’re that good.’

Just thought I’d share them along with the painted and sharpie-d ones I found online. I never tire of the DIY spirit of self-customizing, and its so seamless with the Converse brand’s skater-punk vibe. Or am I being nostalgic, and Converse is as evil as Nike? This Converse story suggests otherwise go here). Etsy too comes out of the DIY legacy — lets hope it stays there. ENJOY!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MY CONVERSE FOR SALE at romanlovesgigi on etsy.com

 

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]]> http://www.janestown.net/2014/10/shanzhai-biennial-faux-ism-in-art/ Mon, 13 Oct 2014 02:42:03 +0000 http://www.janestown.net/?p=4311 Duchamp through the eyes of Koons, or just what happens when irony falls down the rabbit hole? I’m not quite sure, but Cyril Duval’s work has often piqued my curiosity. Years back I wrote a profile on himfor Clear magazine when he was launching Item Idem, and he happens to have a show up now at Johannes Vogt.

item idem Portrait of Mussolini as Prometheus, 2014
Planter, bubblegum, latex, foam, silk flowers, cereal boxes, acrylic, glass container, popcorn
10 x 22 x 55in (25 x 56 x 140cm)

Duval’s very smart in a resourceful, wily sort of way, as it seems is his partner-in-crime these days, Babak Radboy, who explains their current project, “Shanzai”, a faux art fair, in Art in America as such:

“The phenomenon of shanzhai is deterritorialized at its core—in the same way that a global art market is so obsessed by and so based on territorial expansion, but at the same time has very little to say about the places that it’s in. Whether it’s the Gulf or Istanbul or Baku or China, it’s all Ubers and hotels. The idea of trying to turn something like shanzhai into a place makes a lot of sense.

The way we operate is really based on invitation and opportunity. All of us in some way or another are annoyed at a kind of traditional studio practice and the idea of warehousing art products and labor and waiting for someone to happily discover you, like you’re a mineral resource or something. We really work around the opportunities that present themselves to us. Everything we do is made up for that specific venue, including press—when we have a large article or review coming up we’ll invent the documentation for a piece that maybe didn’t happen.”

I’m not sure what to make of it – the inevitable post-internet conflation of satire with admiration, the knowing consumer’s predicament? – but for those in London this week, check it out and let me know (especially if it “didn’t happen” ). Here’s the press release, and if you want more, check out this feature in V magazine:

SHANZHAI BIENNIAL N°3: 100 HAMILTON TERRACE
Monday Oct. 13th, Project Native Informant, London
Tuesday Oct. 14th, Frieze Projects (Live), booth L1, London

ART PRESS RELEASE:
For it’s third Biennial in as many years, SHANZHAI BIENNIAL will attempt to sell a £32,000,000 estate at Frieze Art Fair, London — for which they stand to make a healthy commission.

Entitled SHANZHAI BIENNIAL N°3: 100 HAMILTON TERRACE, the work consists of twin retail installations running concurrently at Frieze and the gallery Project Native Informant. Featuring a high-gloss advertising campaign in stills and video dispersed in a half dozen prominent press outlets but in the end culminating less in these traces than in the potential commercial transaction they seek to perform.

Transforming both their gallery and their prominently placed booth at Frieze  into fully functioning real estate boutiques, SB has partnered with high-end brokerage Aston Chase in the crafting of a advertising strategy which unlocks the potential of Frieze as a lifestyle brand with a rarified demographic penetration uncannily suited to the London property market.

Taking the iconography and phenomenon of Frieze itself as their starting point, SB responds to an environment of intensely subdivided space, in which a labyrinth of booths recreates in miniature a global landscape of private galleries in an almost platonic representation of the dynamics of culture and commerce.

The fair has coincided with an epoch for the popularity and usefulness of contemporary art — which has itself become indispensable  to the industries of property development, place-branding and ‘reurbaniziation’. The magazine from which it sprang also operates as a rentier of cultural space: producing a publication defined as a space for critical discourse; practically supported through the sale of advertisements. Advertisers effectively pay for space for its proximity to critique.

With it’s crypto-corporate identity evoking limited ethical liability SHANZHAI BIENNIAL decants the space afforded critique as a mediator of culture and commerce by directly profiting not only from the sale but also the production of its work.

With 100 HAMILTON TERRACE, SHANZHAI BIENNIAL squarely leaves the round of artists working within the framework of corporate aesthetics and positions itself as a commercial entity exploiting the art world in a mutually beneficial exchange of services. In the end the biggest winner is the public.

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