CT / MeetFactory Gallery / Objektonomy: The Economy of the Object

Curator: Sally Haftel Naveh
Opening: 3. 9., 7pm
Exhibition duration: 3. 9. – 11. 10. 2015
Artists: Sharon Balaban (IL), Jakub Geltner (CZ), Zac Hacmon (IL), Roy Menachem Markovich (IL), Jan Nálevka (CZ), Hila Toony Navok (IL), Rona Stern (IL), Adam Vačkář (CZ), Aleksandra Vajd & Hynek Alt (CZ), Roni Weiss (IL)    

As a central component of visual arts ever since the early modernism of the twentieth century,  mass‐produced  objects  still  retain  a  great  significance  in  carrying  out  artistic actions, from the initial gesture of Marcel Duchamp in his ready‐made to the American pop art  of  the  1960’s  and  1970’s  –  a  movement  that  “rediscovered”  the  artistic  potential  of commodities,  labeling  them  as  the  quintessential  symbol  and  derivative  of  a  capitalist consumer culture.   In light of the centennial to Duchamp’s ready-made, celebrated at a time of global capitalism, neo-liberal trends, deregulation and the ascendance of multinational corporations whose power threatens to destabilize societies everywhere, it is interesting to reexamine the status and representation of everyday commodities – objects that, more than just mere utilitarian means, have come to dominate our entire existence.  

The exhibition Objectonomy at MeetFactory aims to explore the economy of  the commercial  object  in  contemporary  art  through  works  by  10  artists  from  Israel  and  the Czech  Republic,  all  of  whom  deal  primarily  with  this  thematic.  The works assembled, in different media, incorporate objects of mass‐produced origin – both mundane and functional – which have become a central and vital component of today's Western consumerist society.  

An abundance of widely available everyday consumer goods, drawn mostly from the realm of the domestic, dominates the subject matter of the works on view – from kitchen towels, bathroom accessories and plastic detergent containers to processed food, toys, cosmetics, electronic gear and more – uncovering society’s complex relationship with consumerism in‐between fascination and distaste. Reflecting the growing ambivalence with which we have come to consider the excess that surrounds us, they engage critically and sarcastically with a growing obsession that is  at the root of our  love‐hate relationship with them  –  a tangled relationship where the balance between subject (the consumer) and object (the commodity) has been broken, doing away with this perceived hierarchy to a point where it is no longer clear who is in charge of whom.  

This tangled relationship finds its way to artistic creation, reformulating the iconographic reading of these commodities through a new representational dialectic that transforms the prosaic and commonplace – whether explicitly or metaphorically – into a series of critically charged,  significant  and  reflexive  moments,  however  humoristic  in  their  presentation. Explored through a wide range of  artistic  strategies,  this  new  representational  dialectic vacillates between an attempted sublimation and glorification of the object on the one hand and  ironically ridiculing  it  on the  other,  giving  way,  in  between those two  extremities, to representations  where the  object  becomes  a referential  vehicle  for  emotional  expression and the perpetuation of memory.  

The works presented are all about artistic subjectivity, questioning in addition the  artist’s role as a social‐cultural agent in his readiness to point out and underline the problematic of contemporary daily life in a hyper-consumerist world.

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Contact and more information:

Tereza Moravcová - PR & Marketing
tereza.moravcova@meetfactory.cz
+ 420 608 212 548

In 2015, the MeetFactory is supported by the grant of 6.5 million CZK from the City of Prague and by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic.