America’s Most Wanted Painting by Russians Komar & Melamid
October 25, 2008. America’s Most Wanted Painting by Russians Komar & Melamid is the product of market research into national aesthetic preferences in painting in the U.S. The idealized canvas translates statistics found during research showing, for instance, that 33% of Americans prefer autumnal scenes while 56% want to see historical figures in paintings. America’s Most Wanted Painting is part of the current exhibition at New York’s Parsons The New School for Design called Ours: Democracy in the Age of Branding. Just in time for the presidential elections and on show through February 1, 2009, Ours curator Carin Kuoni invited 40 international artists and designers, including Aleksandra Mir, Liam Gillick, Timo Nasseri, Les Liens Invisibles and PETLab, to scrutinize democracy as a brand. The work on view will include photography, graphics, furniture design, video, sculpture, painting, new media and multimedia installations. Even for the jaded or cynical, there is humor to be found in the candor of Ours: Presented on a website entitled whytheyhate.us, Steve Lambert’s photographs of public spaces answer the question he poses in many succinct ways. The Institute for Infinitely Small Things offers, in exchange for expenses, to travel to a buyer’s country to sell their patriotism. Other works celebrate the small details that make up “freedom.” Perhaps a good post-election activity to put it all back into perspective? parsons.edu
Miguel Luciano’s Cuando las Gallinas Mean (When Hens Pee)
Photo by Michael Lambert from whytheyhate.us
Kota Ezawa’s lightbox entitled A Space of Your Own
Institute for Infinitely Small Things’s Transferring Patriotism
Hank Willis Thomas’s Branded Head