i can make that

Connor Frew
Oct 20, 2014 6:47AM

The web-based viewing platform is not solely a vehicle of consumption—images are created and disseminated and viewed amongst potential millions simultaneously through complex suite of industrial tools. The online object is constantly in flux between a state of destruction and production. Can the value of the artifact be preserved in this form?

The exhibition seeks to filter Rauschenberg's interest in the mundane and the commodified as critique of the tradition of painting and image-making, and hurl it  towards its (technologically contemporary) conclusion: i can make that is a statement of the subversive capabilities of the web-space towards the value and sanctity of images, allowing the mechanics of supply to bring the destruction (and assert total  interchangeability) of the artifact itself. 

Rauchenberg’s Earth Day, when looked at through the lens of commodity and production, loses all value; the image itself is dispersed instantaneously to the largest supportable audience, effectively increasing the production of the work to accommodate. Earth Day is manufactured for millions, reducing the value per image towards absolute zero. The work becomes effectively inconsequential, valueless. This 50-edition print is extended towards infinity, the value towards zero.

And what happens when the image is duplicated in-space? These are not analogs or copies, under this destabilization of value, these images are just as material as the original and just as valuable as any other. Each viewing platform is a factory, and these works are constantly being de- and re-materialized in relation to the viewer. There is no sanctity to spoil—the destruction of the object is constant and total.

In the age of internet it is not solely content production that is democratized, but content itself. Each image is an individual module, an anomaly escaping the laws of scarcity and demand, solid and interchangeable. All works are concurrent. u can make that and i can make that

Connor Frew