Collectors’ Favorites is an episode of local cable program from the mid-1990s in which ordinary people were invited to present their personal collections—a concept that in many ways anticipates current reality TV shows and internet videos. When it comes her turn to “perform,” Bornstein displays mundane and disposable—but elaborately archived or framed—consumer objects such as coffee lids, plastic straws, candy wrappers, and product labels. Through the medium of public broadcasting, then, she makes visual the frequently overlooked but massive cultural penetration of advertising, and its proliferation of “throwaway culture” via images. Further, Bornstein suggests that within a massive and mercurial social network that often places value arbitrarily, any worthless mass-market products can be turned into coveted objects via absurd relations and vice versa.
Jennifer Bornstein’s works range from performance, conceptual photography, film, drawing, and etchings to curatorial practice. By foregrounding the self-constructed nature of narrative and subjectivity, Bornstein’s practice is a constant rethinking of relations, both social and historical—but not so much in terms of negation and rupture, but rather connection, mutuality, and reintegration.
In the work titled The Glossies (1980), an affinity for photography manifested itself before McCollum actually began to use photography as a medium...
The Class (2005) by Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook challenges the viewer’s personal sense of morality and tolerance by depicting a classroom from hell...
Compositions such as Tree on Keystone (2011) become hyperreal versions of their real-world equivalents...
In the work titled The Glossies (1980), an affinity for photography manifested itself before McCollum actually began to use photography as a medium...
Clarissa Tossin’s film Ch’u Mayaa responds to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House (constructed 1919–21) in Los Angeles, an example of Mayan Revival architecture...
Sarcastically titled to call attention to the problematic notions underlying colonialism, this photograph shows hundreds of Native Malaysians seated quietly behind one of their colonial oppressors...
In Studies of Chinese New Villages II Gan Chin Lee’s realism appears in the format of a fieldwork notebook; capturing present-day surroundings while unpacking their historical memory...
30 Proposals of Flag explores the relationships between signs, meanings, aesthetics, and nations...
In the early 2000s, as urban redevelopment accelerated and intense construction significantly diminished public space in Tehran, state-funded murals began to represent imaginary landscapes on building facades...
This work refers to the “Dream Machines”, an experimental object invented by the painter and writer Brion Gysin and the scientist Ian Sommerville, and which is composed of a light bulb with light passing through slits in a rotating cylinder...
Bowers’ Radical Hospitality (2015) is a sculptural contradiction: its red and blue neon letters proclaim the words of the title, signaling openness and generosity, while the barbed wires that encircle the words give another message entirely...
The acronym “CFL” stands for an existing light standard (Compact Fluorescent Light) as well as a standard nutrient (Cognitive Fooding Laboratory)...
The work of Keith Tyson is concerned with an interest in generative systems, and embraces the complexity and interconnectedness of existence...
In a style that is unique of Tokoudagba, he evokes the kings, gods and their symbols related to the earth, water, air and fire, usually on a white background...