New York Postcard: Collective Imagination

He’s the man who knows the scores, ladies and gentlemen, George Shaw…

Installation view

Footwear (Orange Heel)

1st @ Service (Bergdorf Goodman)

POPS

Given her previous occupation as window dresser and visual merchandiser for high-end fashion stores, Rachel Owens reveals her preoccupation with the obsessive consumption of resources and beautiful but unnecessary bibelots in her show at Zieher, Smith & Horton. Incorporating burnt canvases that spell corporate sales credos; amputated, glass-fragment sculptures referencing store mannequins; and leather patch works tracing rag trade factory worker demographics in the State of New York, Owens wonders if the compulsive behaviour of collectors at Chelsea galleries is not much different from that at Bergdorf Goodman.

Suspension Strategy

Another Take on Resurrection Hill series

Halong-Kellong (production still)

Huashan Project – Performance

“…it is absurd that one can appropriate the property of a collective imagination – grounded in human civilization – and claim it to be their own intellectual property.” With these words and works like mechanised mobiles built with found branches; videos of Chinese-made, mutant Harley Davidson knock-offs; free DIY artwork downloads; as well as paintings created with ink, ashes from discarded animal carcasses, and dirt from his studio floor; Shi Jinsong questions and parodies supermarket-like consumption at international art fairs in his show Art Fair: Free Download at Klein Sun.

Installation view

On Reflection, Material E02

On Reflection, Material E23

Examining how painting and photography represent reality, London-based Ori Gersht destroys three priceless, 17^th century Brueghel paintings in his exhibition at CRG. But it’s not as simple as what you see. First, each painting is replicated and placed in front of a tempered glass mirror. Gersht then focuses one large format camera on the surface of the mirror and another on the flower painting itself three metres away. Activating an electric charge he shatters the mirrored illusion capturing the alternative reality in photographs that ultimately look like paintings.