Artists deploy mass-produced images to critique the impact of consumer culture and Modernism's disengagement with the everyday world.
1980 - now
videos + essays
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Theaster Gates on collecting
Theaster Gates reflects on the various collections he has acquired and created artworks with, including the Jet magazine archives and the inventory of an entire hardware store
Meriem Bennani’s Exploded Visions
Can art be funny and serious at the same time? Using social media-inspired effects, artist Meriem Bennani subverts audience expectations of both pop culture and her own Muslim community with unexpected playfulness and pathos.
An interview with Jamian Juliano-Villani
Contemporary painter Jamian Juliano-Villani talks about the pressure of being an emerging artist in New York and finds inspiration at Ripley's Believe It or Not!
An interview with Fred Wilson about the conventions of museums and race
Artist Fred Wilson talks about the conventions of the museum and how he used them in his art to disrupt the inherent biases and traditional understandings that museums and its patrons have had
An interview with Kerry James Marshall about his series Mementos
Artist Kerry James Marshall explains his series Mementos inspired by his memory of 1960s-era souvenirs.
Stéphane Couturier, Fenetre, Eastlake Greens, San Diego
Building the American dream in the California desert.
Wayne Thiebaud, Ponds and Streams
Can the commonplace working farmland of California's Sacramento River Valley be a place of of breathtaking beauty?
Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Trade (Gifts for Trading Land with White People)
Smith created this in 1992, responding to the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ arrival in North America.
Michel Tuffery, Pisupo Lua Afe (Corned Beef 2000)
Tuffery’s iconic “tinned bull” addresses contemporary concerns about ecological health and food sovereignty
Damien Hirst, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living
Though this looks like an exhibit in a natural history museum, Hirst’s subject comes straight from art history.
Jeff Wall, A View from an Apartment
At first glance this may seem to be an uncomposed snapshot of modern life. Think again.
Jeff Koons, Pink Panther
Koons’ cartoonish life-size emblems of childhood innocence are an assault upon both sincerity and taste.
