Sitting in Walthamstow, perhaps the perfect distillation of London’s arty/cheap/gentrification trajectory, it’s all too easy to talk to one of the art world’s foremost campaigners about the problems with the capital – its soaring rents, its subsequent forcing of creativity to the fringes, its shrinking arts curriculum. It’s also easy to take these issues and moan about the wider problems of social media, political apathy and the dangers in higher education’s drive to make “artist” one in the same as “personal brand.” But the joy of Bob and Roberta Smith is that for all his acknowledgment of these things, he’s resolutely positive; not simply seeing problems and grumbling about them, but proposing solutions and celebrating them. To use his parlance, he’s Bobtimistic. And after just a few moments with him, he makes you Bobtimistic too.
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K8 Hardy at Karma International
Artist: K8 Hardy
Venue: Karma International, Zurich
Exhibition Title: Bargain
Date: February 7 – March 22, 2014
Click here to view slideshow
Full gallery of images, press release and link available after the jump.
Images:
Images courtesy of Karma International, Zurich
Press Release:
Karma International is happy to present the first solo show of New York based artist K8 Hardy (*1977, Fort Worth, Texas). This show, titled Bargain, is the first time the artist combines photography and sculpture from different periods.
At first glance the exhibition seems to transform the gallery space into a chic boutique. A neon sign with a woman’s hand holding a colorful handbag uses the visual language of advertising. Yet the materials used – cheap glue-on fingernails, the pattern of a fake Louis Vuitton bag – contradict the idea of luxury and fashion. So does the writing on the light box: instead of advertising fashion it advertises K8 Hardy herself. The sculptures, lit by colorful disco lights, recall the commercial mannequin and emphasize the theatrical experience of shopping. They too are made with found and used materials.
The transformation of fashion and advertising, call our own personal role in mass consumption into question. The life-size self-portraits reference Hardy’s infamous performance at the last Whitney Biennial, Untitled Runway Show. They are at once a fake advertising campaign, and an analysis of the ever-present Selfie. The small prints go further to deconstruct our internet self-obsession, using collage techniques with the screens and devices that mitigate our consumption. The negative is edited multiple times by analogue and digital cut up techniques and then rearranged into a new motive.
Contra-cyclical to the “selfie-phenomenon” promoted by Instagram and Facebook, Hardy recently moved on and transferred the idea of posing and corporeal representation into a more abstract level. Shaking off the necessity of the artists presence as a model, they take on their own character and their own poses. Headless, skinny and a bit full of themselves the wood constructions bathe in the colorful light in the gallery. Their flirtatious and bizarre appearance seem very alluring. Who can resist them advertising a really good Bargain?
Link: K8 Hardy at Karma International
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