72M Sale Shatters Warhol Record

20.07.2011 - 29.07.2011

dieAusstellungsstrasse, Wien / Österreich

“72M Sale Shatters Warhol Record” aims at interrogating
the dubious nature of auctions, and the hubris that
surrounds them (e.g., that price is a measure of an items
value). In some ways the work replicates, and in others
investigates, the contextual framework of the auction house
and art and its markets. I am interested in the auction
house as a social site that is engaged in the production of
constructed images and information, and the augmentation
of value, and the ambiguous line between fact and fiction....

The work centers around the field of antiques because they
are quintessential objects of historical fetishism and
reification. I am also interested in their ontological status.
In Heideggerian terminology they have gone from the
ready-to-hand (zunhandenheit) as everyday background
elements, to becoming present-at hand (vorhandenheit),
conceptualized entities without any useful function in the
world. For instance, the moment they are no longer being
used for their intended purpose (i.e., as tools or equipment,
such as a plate or a fork is used for eating) they no longer
have a function within a holistically structured background
of meaning (e.g., as the plate or fork become
conceptualized as entities they no longer can be accurately
described as plates or forks).

The work also aims to usher in questions about the current
state artistic agency, aesthetic autonomy, and criticism in a
moment in which each are hovering in a state of
vulnerability. For instance: what are the causes,
ramifications, and consequences of an over-inflated
economic bubble? What effects does this have on the
subjective orientation of an artist, a critic, and historian?

[Quelle: http://www.dieausstellungsstrasse.at]