Cosima von Bonin

 Von Bonin's textile characters included in the exhibition present a mass of contradictions—approachable creatures that aren’t quite what they seem or don’t behave as we might expect. Weaving together humor with melancholy, softness with hardness, as well as access and exclusion.

These sculptures mix art history, popular culture, music, and craft, while engaging in feminist destabilizations. Appropriately, the deep sea is its own world, little known and remote for us.

Trans Genesis: Evaporations and Mutations

Trans Genesis: Evaporations and Mutations at Vilma Gold, Lynn Hershman Leeson presents a combination of works spanning from 1968.

In her Cyborg series mechanical elements, identity numbers, and technological symbols are superimposed on the faces and body parts of women, making them into half-human and half robotic female forms. These images are manipulated using a wide variety of techniques and effects and represents bodies transformed by computer-based technologies - this seems relevant looking into the present day where we photoshop every girl ever put in a magazine. 

Hanne Lippard at KW ICA in Berlin

Hanne Lippard from Norway just had her first solo show at the KW ICA in Berlin, Germany. The show was made up of one single installation taking up the whole ground floor of the gallery, consisting of a useable spiral bound stair case titled "Flesh". The work is stated to be based off of past works about language. The work attempting to question the confines and physical limits of the institutionalized space it is viewed and leading the viewers to a view of the outside through the window.

Lunchtime dystopia: CON-Figuration at Postmasters

There was a two part installation at Postmasters. The artist of interest is Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung with his large scale digital paintings. He displays them as printed canvas, this particular one being 40 x 72 inches. It depicts Obama as the many armed Goddess Durga with a golden crown, with an 'adoring audience of small foreign leaders". It is completely sourced from the internet and collaged into a vividly colored piece. It also references traditional Mysore paintings from South India, with symbolism and color palette and composition. This was displayed recently, after Trump's inauguration, and the press relief was simple and short, finishing with 'In dark times will there also be singing? Yes, there will also be singing about the dark times.' 

Chadwick Rantanen at Team Bungalow

Chadwick at Team Bungalow

In this exhibition by Team Bungalow, the implementation of many common commodities such as kitchen appliances and battery packs are integrated in new and unique ways to remove their original functionality of the work. 

This particular piece is based off of the design structure of a fishing trap, and encourages the viewers of the work to involve themselves within it's structure. Without context, the piece encourages communication between participating audience members as they involve themselves within the details of the work. Related to relational aesthetics in the sense of inducing the openness for discussion, getting involve within this work allows for the people viewing it to leave questions of their own.  

Free speech: White artist paints Emmett Till, black artists protest

This piece falls under public art practice. There is a historical context that roots this piece in both historical and contemporary realms. In 1955, 2 white men lynched Emmett Till, these men were then tried and all charges were acquitted. His mother was outraged and published a photograph of Emmett's beaten face from his open casket in Jet Magazine. This photograph was more recently put on a list of the top 100 influential photographs. A white artist by the name of Dana Shutz used this imagery in a painting that was put up in the 2017 Whitney Biennial. Many black artists have protested its existence and how it was allowed in the show. Hannah Black, a black artists from London wrote letters to the curators demanding it be destroyed. Black artist Parker Bright took a different route and stands in front of the painting, trying to obscure the image, but in a peaceful protest, with a t-shirt with "Blalck Death Spectacle" written on the back. He engages in conversations with other gallery goers, and speaks his mind on how Shutz had no right to use such imagery because she is white. I find this fascinating, especially because Bright is doing this as a performative artistic act, using performance art and peaceful protesting to make his voice clear as a Black Artist.

Michel Auder at Sant’Andrea de Scaphis

Riappropriazione

In Converso, Milan, Franco Mazzucchelli wrapped the space in sheets of polyurethane to create one of his environmental instillations. His work is very site specific in the way that it takes a common public space and puts it into a new context that forces the public to engage with the space and each other in a new way.

'Crisis Tourism' byTobias Madison

                 While there is no specific statement, placards, or spoken artistic objective to 'Crisis Tourism'  this exhibit speaks out in a similar manner to the organization Act Up during the Aids crisis. Crisis Tourism may not have the blatant objective on what it is trying to inform its audience about a certain cause, but rather it displays a more abstract idealism within its works despite the bold and almost political lettering involved within the exhibition peices.  The words scrawled against photographs in this exhibit show a connection to the stylized fonts and bold interfaces that are used in Act up posters or any pieces involving the aids crisis. Though while both are blatantly different each one grabs the viewers attention and brings them to focus on whatever is metaphorically shouting at them through these art works.

Simon Thompson at dépendance, Brussels

Rising Damp

Simon Thompson's instillation "Rising Damp" at dépendance in Brussels exhibits a small variety of works that seem to surround the topic of low income housing.  The works above include a drawing titled "View of Brussels", done with charcoal on paper, and a series of 6 oil paintings on canvas depicting a form to apply for Housing Benefits in the UK (assistance from the government to pay rent).  The contrasting ideas of a seemingly luxurious house in Brussels and the form for Housing Benefits seem to stand as more of a commentary on the "site" of economic security than a form of institutional critique.  The other works in the show include a video titles "Rising Damp Sitcom" and a series of photographs depicting ground meat.

Violet Dennison at Jan Kap's gallery 

Violet Dennison's current show at Jan Kaps gallery in Cologne Germany, consists of sculpture, video, and photograph.  The work is also accompanied by a very poetic artist statement bringing up themes of post-humanism and the analogy of life towards plumbing. The installation of the sculpture its self effects the environment in which the viewer is in, creating a site specific relationship.

General Idea

Curated by Agustín Pérez Rubio, the exhibition surveys the artistic trajectory of General Idea (A Latin America Canadian collective), touching upon topics such as archaeology, history, sex, race, illness, self-representation, and the myth of the group itself, a recurring subject of their production. 

General Idea were pioneers in incorporating the issue of AIDS in art. In 1987 they took Robert Indiana’s work LOVE and transformed it into AIDS to create a logo that was used in many of their works.

Installation for the Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise (Congolese Plantation Workers Art League or CATPC)

This installation creates a theoretical space for the Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise (Congolese Plantation Workers Art League or CATPC), an organization of plantation workers who create sculptures out of the materials they harvest for little pay. This installation creates a board room setting, emulating the business that build their wealth on the materials harvested from Congo.

Amy Sillman At Castillo/Corrales

Amy Sillman's works at the Castillo/Corrales gallery are part of a artistic fashion that involves a poem being played alongside a animated video. This exhibition included the film (which had around 2000 pieces made by Sillman using an iPhone or an iPad) as well as other pieces of artwork, the title of the exhibit is taken from a poem written by Lisa Robertson. Using a variety of methods to create each piece, the point of the exhibit is to show an understanding of feminine modes of subjection and resistance. In tandem with the poem by Lisa Robertson, Amy Sillman has used her abstract artworks to try and show the world about the female life. 

Dena Yago at Bodega

Dena Yago’s exhibition “The Lusting Breed” consists of five tableaus, each taking on a role that has been ascribed to women in the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries.  These include renditions of Courbet’s Sleeping Spinner and Grain Sifters, as well as images of women as caretakers, designers, listeners, and craftsmen.  The work speaks to the sense that the roles of women throughout history has been and continues to be fetishized and to a point trivialized, yet at the same time the images carved into the tableaus are specific to the exact time they belong to.  Sleeping Spinner is a product of 1853 showing a take on the working woman at the time, and The Influencer is an example of the view on the working woman of 2017.  While representing a long-held struggle, they are separated by their context.

Judith Bernstein at Kunsthall Stavanger

Artist: Judith Bernstein

Venue: Kunsthall Stavanger

Date: February 4 – May 18, 2016

http://www.contemporaryartdaily.com/2016/05/judith-berstein-at-kunsthall-stavanger/

Judith Bernstein themes throughout her work are based on warfare, gender politics, and sexual aggression. Bernstein's work is bold! It explores a lot of ideas of identity through gender and sexuality. She uses "graphic" imagery to portray that concept. While also using text to make in prominent and in your face. 

Mary Beth Edelson at David Lewis

Mary Edelson's searches for powerful images of women which she then draws and paints on to transform the woman into a goddess.  Her images combat patriarchal repression and incorporate gender identity.   

Michael Armitage - Matrix 263

Michael Armitage at BAM/PFA -Matrix 263

Michael Armitage addresses gender and sexuality in these oil paintings he does on cloth made from Lubugo bark- a tree from Uganda, next to his homeland of Kenya. A cloth originally used for garments of ceremonial tribal leaders, Armitage stretches it for paintings like this one, called, Matrix 263, which shows a Tanzanian pop artist, Diamond Platnumz getting off a plane with his entourage. The form on the left looks to me like two people--a man and woman-- embracing, but upon further inspection, it is just one person. This could symbolize the morphing and blurring of meanings and distinctions of genders and sexualities. In Another piece of Armitage's, there is a painting of five people who also blend into their environment, like the figures in Matrix 263 but they are more blatantly discussing gender and sexuality as they fondle and inspect their and others penises. 

Michael Armitage at BAM/PFA

This body of work by Michael Armitage reflects on sexuality and gender stereotypes in Kenya, as well as the historical relationship between Westen and non-Western cultures. In the photo above Armitage is playing off of Picasso's Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Rather than using the imagery of female prostitutes, Armitage uses "Beach Boys" who scour the beaches of Kenya for older, rich, European women to sell goods, drugs, and sex to.

Tobias Madison at The Modern Institute

Tobias Madison at The Modern Institute

This installation by Tobias Madison consists of many different pieces, from commissioned illustrations, appropriated and non-appropriated photographs, and textured or sculptural paintings. He incorporates a strong limited palette, and text to heighten his message. His message is one of crisis tourism, a look at consumerism and tourism, and how American Culture has changed through political and economic times, focusing on the Lead Ages (1960s-1980s) juxtaposed with contemporary elements. For example, one photo features a girl wearing a very old jacket from a band, customized by the previous owner with patches, now worn to the point of the lining, with the composition miming that of another's famous photo. He is taking a very complex idea, shown through time, and visualizing it into certain cinematographic moments, with world of context behind each image, to shout the narrative at the viewer. 

Michael Armitage at BAM/PFA

Matrix 263

Kenya born artist Michael Armitage is a painter based in both Nairobi and London.  His current show Matrix 263 at BAM/PFA is a body of work reflecting on sexuality and gender stereotypes in Kenya. In the piece to the far right of the photo above, Armitage refers directly to Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, yet changing the subject from women prostitutes to men known as "beach boys", described as "combing the beaches in Kenya looking for wealthy female, European patrons."  All of Armitage's work refers to western art history, yet merges the western history with the history of Kenya and surrounding regions.  For example, each painting is painted with oil paint on a stretched piece of Lubugo bark cloth, described as "a material harvested and prepared from trees in Uganda and turned into a sacred fabric, often used for making ceremonial garments for tribal leaders."

Andre Pierre at Central Fine

                           Andre Pierre at Central Fine

Andre Pierre has an interesting spin on identity through art. He began painting after an experience that led him to the practice of Voodoo, which then led to a conversation on the place where The Symbolic, The Imaginary and The Real, meet. He was born in Port Au Prince and painted there until he was introduced to a contemporary american artist who guided him towards more modern structures like stretched canvas. So his art began in a pre colonial area, but needed to adapt to a post colonial society. He  mainly focused on trying to show his dieties in the real world and how they interact with the real.

Angie Keefer at Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art

                       Angie Keefer at Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art
Keefer's installation consists of three pieces, spread between two spaces. She brings in elements of audience participation, performance, video, and light art. Upon entering the first part of the space, there is a large freestanding wooden sculpture, curved and covered in a blue material. On this is projected waves, and the piece is called Interminable Swell. A live feed is recorded of the sculpture and how the viewers interact with it. Then around the sculpture and into another space is a screen with the live feed. This separates the audience from the performer, where neither can see each other in real life, but the audience can see the performer through the screen. The other piece is the light letters, 'second' and 'thought' on top each other with each word flashing at different speeds. The last piece is a framed video, studying how first class airplane seating came from earlier forms of lounging, referencing pieces like Manet's Olympia. This is an interesting spin on performance art, in the sense that the artist set up the installation, but the performance occurs without the artist, solely by the viewers.

Ndoro Na Miti

Ndoro Na Miti by Wangechi Mutu at Gladstone Gallery, New York

 Wangechi Mutu brings a direct conversation around hybridity and relationship between Eastern and Western cultures. These pieces are sculptures from clay which brings light to the relationship many eastern cultures have to the Earth. On the other hand, these clay sculptures are depictions of viruses. This combines the sterile and analytical characteristics of science in the West with the deep and sacred tradition of sculpture with clay in the East.

                                       Wangechi Mutu at Gladstone Gallery

                                                     Artist: Wangechi Mutu

                                            Venue: Gladstone Gallery, New York

                                               Exhibition Title: Ndoro Na Miti 

                                             Date: January 27 – March 25, 2017

  http://www.contemporaryartdaily.com/2017/03/wangechi-mutu-at-gladstone-gallery/#more-210669

                                    This sculptural installation purposes an alternative to the inherent modes of representation in both Western and Eastern traditions by reimagining and recreating the connection between the body, the natural world, and the social constructs. These sculptures evoke challenging and intimate interactions between humans and the environment. They confront myths of representation. This installation relates directly to the concept of hybridity. 

Karl Haendel

Karl Haendel

Haendel uses the idea of the portrait to explore contemporary definitions of masculinity, power, and public identity. He undertakes the challenging task of drawing a portrait of what it is to be a man, or perhaps what is expected of men, in images that span a broad range of representations. 

Like Butler, he thinks the representation of gender and gender confirmation is always changing and is a state of doing. It is how you act and not what you are just assigned at birth. How you portray yourself is how you can be seen in gender. When people defy the norms of gender, like portraying masculinity in different ways then you are exploring societies definition of gender. 

"The Freedom Principle: experiments in art and music, 1965 to now" group show                                                at the ICA in Philadelphia

This  Group show is based off how several African American artists and musicians on the south side of Chicago in 1965 experimented with a new type of language based off the times, and how it continues to influence contemporary artists all over the world today. This relates to the multiculturalism discussed in this weeks readings.

Albert Wiking: "We Have a Dream"

Albert Wiking's series of photographs titled We Have a Dream is a series of photographs of people accompanied by their individual interviews meant to showcase that nothing is impossible. The Above photographs speak on the post-colonial confusion of African Identity. On the right is Alek Wek (an activist concerned about human rights). And the left, Samuel Opio (A LGBT rights fighter in Uganda).  Having a distinct african heritage, both are wearing traditionally European and male signifiers.

Wangechi Mutu at Gladstone Gallery

Wangechi Mutu at Gladstone Gallery

This series of pieces plays with the notion of hybridity and the communication between origins of cultural divisions in Eastern and Western society, while simultaneously integrating a notion of one new relationship built within this communication. In this piece above, the artist Mutu communicates the relationship between mud and earth to that of a more traditional Eastern civilization. However this "traditional" work is designed to be presented in the western museum case, carefully presented on pedestals and surrounded by sterility from the blank walls of the gallery. This contradiction is intentional, focusing on the removal of one cultural to be redesigned for the purpose of another's fetishization and fascinations. 

Wangechi Mutu at Gladstone Gallery

Ndoro Na Miti

The title of the exhibition, Ndoro Na Miti, comes from the Gikuyu words for mud and trees.  In this work Mutu deals with representation of both Eastern and Western traditions by creating an unconventional representation of folklore and the natural world based in East African culture, assumed to be mainly from Kenya, where the artist was born.  Mutu turns the space into an environment filled with her amorphous forms seemingly made of mud and trees, as well as representational bronze cast sculptures.  One of these, shown above, depicts a nguva, a water woman of East African folklore, clearly reminiscent of many myths from many cultures.  In contemplating identity, Mutu places grey blankets for seating around the installation to invite the viewer "to enter a place and re-think themselves."

                                      “Displacement (Prologue)” at Independent Regence

Time Laughs Back at You Like A Sunken Ship made by Basim Magdy in 2012 uses video to make a statement about time and space and it's existence or non existence. It uses props like the industrial mirror and modern architecture to contrast with ancient places like nature and the amphitheater, creating different ideas of cultural tensions, transformations, and adaptions. The use of the mirror also relates to disidentification as it alters the view of the world for the person looking into it, especially as it is seen in the video surrounded by gardens on the reflective side with an interpretive mask on the front that creates a displacement of place and time in space.

John Giorno and Oscar Tuazon at Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich

John Giorno and Oscar Tuazon at Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich

This exhibit is relevant to the Spielmann reading as it features video in an electronic format. This exhibition utilizes video in order to give a visual rhythm to poetry that coincides with audio playing through the headphones. This ties in to Spielmann talking about audiovisual experiences as a defining characteristic of video as a medium.

Barbara Hammer

Barabara Hammer used hand held camera to help with the gritty feel of her movies. She experimented with filmatic representations of new lesbian self-awareness that was only just breaking free from social constructs of the 1960's/1970s. 

The films are known for the physical awareness and painterly value, bringing a characteristic of sensual and expressive styles. 

David Diao at Postmasters

In this body of work, Diao explores his emigration from Hong Kong to the United States. He uses imagery from Western culture as discourse for how he does not fully identify with his new culture as he is a non-white immigrant in a culture that looks down on him for this. 

Becky Kolsrud: Heads and Gates at Tif Sigfrid

In this body of work, specifically the heads, Kolsrud engages actively in art historical disidentification.  By creating so called "double portraits" Kolsrud opts out of tradition, using shaped canvas for figurative work, and by creating psychological portraits of women which transcend the traditional problematics of female portraiture.  She recycles the historical trend of shaped canvas, and portraiture, combining them to create portraits of women that exist not for a specifically male gaze, but exist on their own, intelligent terms, rewriting the art historical schema of female portraiture.  The "Gates" section of the show, a series of panels hung edge to edge with a repeated gate motif behind which lie peering eyes.  This work functions as the viewer, examining you from outside of you, and perhaps even outside of hegemonic culture and its opposition.  We can even see this work as a survival strategy of sorts, as women are often objectified by culture the act of creating "double portraits" forces us to consider them in new terms, and the creation of a wall of eyes turns the gaze back onto the viewer, regardless of gender, we see here a reaction against the old hegemony, and a redefinition of the female subject, the viewer, and consequently the artist herself.

David Diao at Postmasters

A Child's World
acrylic and vinyl on canvas
70 x 40 inches

             In this body of work, David Diao recounts on his early childhood living in the Tsim Sha Tsui region of Hong Kong.  His handling of source material, in this case, a map of the region and the locations of his home, school, and church, disidentifies the inherent information from its original meaning.  While the map is presented accurately for the time, it is crucial to realize that TST has now been expanded upon, and this map is no longer accurate, giving the piece an inherent time and historical nature.  What is most crucial however, is the 1, 2, and 3 of the locations he designates as the world of his youth.  By juxtaposing the small scope of his "world" against the map of the TST area, he is circumventing each meaning of 'this is a map' or 'this is where these things are' and instead creating a comparison of perceived versus constructed realities.  In this case, the perceived being his world and the constructed being the TST area as thought of as a separate reality in the scope of Hong Kong as an entirety.

Roger Hiorns at Ikon

December 7, 2016 – March 5, 2017

In Roger Hiorns statement about his solo exhibition at Ikon in Birmingham, he describes his work as taking materials and objects and "cut(ting) them off from what their established use is, to directly interfere with their world-ness."  In this way, Hiorns is engaging in the idea of disidentification.  By taking materials and objects found in everyday life, such as machinery or actual people, and recontextualizing them, Hiorns "focuses on various aspects of modern life, closely analysing what is assumed or taken for granted."

Exile

These metal sculptures where made by melting a figurative army of tin soldiers, with the liquid tin being submerged into cold water. This is in reference to a divination practice called Molybdomancy. The practice itself is a common New Years tradition in most Nordic and Germanic Nations.

Traditionally, the original metals were just peices of tin (or an alloy immitation), but here the artist melts tin soldiers. This choice is en mass to represent a fortune for a collective rather than a singular person. The artists does this to represent the fragility of freedom and individuality, as groups of individuals become part of a coherent macrocosm. Something that is too prevalent today.

Rirkit Tiravanija at Neugerriemschnieder

Rirkit Tiravanija's 8th solo show at the Neugerriemschnieder gallery in Berlin is titled "Curry for the soul of the forgotten" and incorporates video, sculpture, and oil painting. The premise of the show is the political tension occurring in Thailand the last few years. The three projected videos are specifically filmed in northern Thailand, and have context to the development of video from a technology to a medium. The three panel video has a monumental presence in the show, and represents videos place as a medium in contemporary art. The discourse between the physical cooking pot on the floor and the cooking pot being used in the videos, brings up interesting questions of which is closer to reality.

Bethan Huws at Barbara Gross

Bethan Huws at Barbara Gross

Bethan Huws, who had dedicated many years to studying the works of Duchamp and his appropriated materials, creates works herself that reflect the process of dis-identification. She takes simple objects. such as the cracker above, and places them in a scenario where their meaning can be reconsidered and recycled into new context. 

Interestingly enough, Huws does not work with human focused propaganda, but rather takes focus on product placement and how those specific products' purposes can be altered and re purposed for art purposes. She uses written word and package design to construct an idea of what can be created from an already created material. 

Keiichi Tanaami at Karma International

The Laughing Spider by Keiichi Tanaami at Karma International
Keiichi Tanaami creates art that is inspired by psychedelic culture and pop art. His more personal inspiration came from recreating feelings and images from the war he experienced when he was a child. He displays the horrors of war through the use of disfigured creatures, skeletons, and the illusion of explosions. Tanaami very blatantly appropriates the design of the Smiling Spiders that were created by Odilon Redon. He also appropriated the composition and movement of Katsushika Hokusai's print The Great Wave Off Kanagawa.

Black Cherokee at ROOM EAST

http://www.contemporaryartdaily.com/2017/02/black-cherokee-at-room-east/images_file_58022/

This piece from the exhibition Black Cherokee at ROOM EAST is a prime example of appropriation art. The artist created this work of appropriation art by using found images and found text to create a whole new meaning to these separate pieces of found material by combining them into one coherent piece of art that has a new narrative. This work of art you could say was created by consumerist browsing, you can tell by the images used, that they were most likely found in magazines or books in which people are persuaded into wanting something or wanting to be like something. By taking the images out of their original context the artist was able to remix the information into something that is not just trying to sell you something but is now telling you a deeper meaning. 

Jiri Kovanda at GB Agency

This exhibition is what Kovanda calls 'interior sculptures' of his small apartment. While I would not 100% call this appropriation art, it is still in that category because it is photography of already made, household objects. In the last reading, it was said that Duchamp was informed by the art of photography that was starting to so prominently take over. And I believe that when looking at these images, it's understandable while. They seem to have no point or to be carelessly made, but that also just intrigues the audience even more. 

Between Two Battles By Rabih Mroué is meant to show the brief pause between warfare. As a kid who grew up in Lebanon during times of turmoil, it's clear he knows about how it all feels. However the appropriation is clear when you see the images cut from numerous war time photos and combined with images of 'normal' instances like the one above. This type of remix shows how placing completely different pictures together in a certain way can change every original mean of the images.

John Smith at Tanya Leighton

 In this piece John Smith uses a number of projections that are littered through a gallery that embodies a house-like structure to portray numerous amounts of photographs that appropriate real-lif scenarios with the past. However this piece embodied appropriation more than the other images in his series because while at first glance this appears as nothing more than projections in a gallery, the entire piece is appropriating looking out of a window on a dim cloudy day.

He is appropriating a home-like structure as well with how the gallery is set up in a unusual setup that resembles a house. It places the audience in a scenario that may not remind them of home, but possibly a place that they have been or visited, or just witnessed while passing by a town.

It appropriates the viewers memories and takes on a different dynamic of subtle appropriation verses blantant appropriation that would be used by artists such as Andy Warhol.

Gabriel Orozco at kurimanzutto, Mexico City

Gabriel Orozco at kurimanzutto, Mexico City

Gabriel Orozco's exhibition at kurimanzutto is a key example of appropriation art and institutional critique. In it, he creates an actual convenience store inside of an art gallery. This convenience store is an OXXO, which is a large convenience chain originating in Mexico. This hybridization creates both a convenience store selling fine art and an art gallery selling mass-market products. Orozco sells products that already exist on the market, but intercepts their logos with his own. This is an example of subverting signification: directly appropriating imagery while nullifying it at the same time.  It is also important to note that both the gallery and OXXO were excited to work with Orozco on this exhibition, exemplifying institutional critique as part of the institution itself. The choice to use OXXO rather than any other chain was a deliberate postmodern move to contextualize the exhibition in the community it lives in, blurring the lines between art and "real life." Additionally, Orozco is appropriating an economic model in the vein of the wheat and chessboard problem (the store is set up like a "game" in which prices change exponentially) in order to comment on the function of capital in the art world.