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...
Starting with Bruce Nauman’s iconic artwork, The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths (Window or Wall Sign) , Mungo Thomson’s neon sign is one of a series that replaces Nauman’s quixotic mini-manifesto with aphorisms from ‘recovery’ culture, especially those made popular by alcoholics anonymous...
The White Album (2008) presents a compilation of one hundred issues of Artforum magazine released between 1970 and 1979...
In the work titled The Glossies (1980), an affinity for photography manifested itself before McCollum actually began to use photography as a medium...
The video Swimming in rivers of Glue is composed of various images of nature, exploring the themes of exploration of space and its colonization...
The Tower of Babel is an installation of large-format photographs that forces the audience to occupy a central position through its monumental scale...
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...
In One Must , an image of a pair of scissors, accompanied by the words of work’s title, poses an ominous question about the relationship between the image and the text...
The acronym “CFL” stands for an existing light standard (Compact Fluorescent Light) as well as a standard nutrient (Cognitive Fooding Laboratory)...
Simpson’s sculptural practice connects architecture, clothing, furniture and the body to explore the functional and sociological roles and the influence of the design and architecture of various cultures and periods in history...
Superb production values and special effects that in the hands of Miguel Angel Rios do not get in the way or distracts from the content and deep essay of this work...