Market Forces / Part I: Consuming Territoriesat carriage trade

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into SOHO, they start opening up new galleries.

Amber Vilas emailed me today about Carriage Trade (or carriage trade), which, among other things, says this about itself on its website:

Through presenting primarily group exhibitions, carriage trade will function not as a means to promote the careers of individual artists, but to provide contexts for their work that reveal its relevance to larger social and political conditions prevalent today. A project of the artist / curator Peter Scott, whose exhibitions have attempted to highlight this relevance over the value of any given artist’s work within the hierarchy of the art market, these projects will intentionally combine well known with lesser known artists, and historical pieces (60’s, 70’s, 80’s) with very recent work. ...

Some themes to be addressed in upcoming shows include issues of propaganda in mass media, the effect of neo-liberal policies on the built environment and social relations, as well as the concept of “mistaken identity” and likeness within the realm portraiture.

Here's a piece of carriage trade's description of their current show, Market Forces / Part I: Consuming Territories:

Market Forces addresses the euphoric consumer culture of the last decade that manifested itself in a seeming overflow of goods and services and an explosion of luxury housing development that now dominates the urban landscape. The term is derived from laissez-faire economic theory and refers to a hands-off approach to the "natural order" of supply and demand. Used in this context, it is meant to invoke skepticism concerning the almost religious belief in, and militant protection of, our god-given right to consume. This two-part exhibition is intended to be as inclusive as the market is pervasive, with work that addresses the influence of consumerism on personality, labor, politics, and the built environment. Market Forces / Part 1: Consuming Territories will examine the profound effects of unregulated markets on the built environment and the psychology of the individual through their relentless quest to consume ever more territory and "claim" space.

The timing of this is kind of funny for me. I've been re-reading Postmodernist literature and Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, so it feels like a Marx bomb went off someplace. But it bears noting that, with millions yet again feeling the pain of an unbounded, overreaching aristocracy, it's high time a few courageously creative minds gave the economic system that powers history a serious re-thinking.

Check out Market Forces at 94 Prince St. 2nd fl, New York, NY 10012.

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