"The bourgcois apparatus of production and publication is capable of assimilating, indeed propagating, an astonishing amount ofi revolutionary themes without seriously putting into question its own continued existence or the class that owns it." - Walter Benjamin
White Columns is pleased to announce the exhibition Markets of Resistance, an exhibit curated by Karen Jones. The mass produced object/image and its marketing campaigns are a barometer of social attitudes and assumptions about a consumer market. This exhibition examines the mass produced object/image in the context of late capitalism. Markets of Resistance traces artists' use of mass produced materials from the readymade through the use of appropriation and recontextualization. There is a corollary focus on art practices which utilize mass marketing strategies in a decidedly activist manner. Jones states, "There is a stabilized moment whereby the representations circulated to promote the commodity object both reflect and define a body politic thus mirror and create identity locations."
The exhibitions includes thirty artists: Mel Chin, Group Material, Hans Haacke, Lyle Ashton Harris, Louise Lawler, Glenn Ligon and Byron Kim, Catherine Owens, Martha Rosler, Adam Rolston, Gary Simmons, Haim Steinbach, Fransc Torres, Susan Walsh, Carrie Mae Weems, David Wojnarowicz, and Sergio Vega among others. The video program includes works by Ina Archer, Gregg Bordowiez and Richard Elovich, Chris Bratton and Annie Goldson, Tony Cokes and Donald Trammel, and Denise Nicolescu. A catalog will be available with an essay by critic Joshua Decter.
Karen E. Jones contributes to ACME Journal, Art & Text, and Tema Celeste. She co-curated the exhibition "The Power of the City the City of Power" at the Whitney Museum of Amenican Art, Downtown at rederal Plaza