Installation view.  Courtesy of the Control Room

Installation view. Courtesy of the Control Room

Art Forum ad for "The Privilege Show".  Courtesy of the Control Room

Art Forum ad for “The Privilege Show”. Courtesy of the Control Room

 

The exhibition “The Privilege Show” started with the efforts of Kickstarter. The campaign, initiated by the curators of the Los Angeles-based artist-run space Control Room, titled “Artforum or Bust” was to raise $6,380 to buy a full-page ad in Artforum for their upcoming exhibition “The Privilege Show” to show how far-reach, disproportionate and inaccessible placing an advertisement is in such a widely-acknowledged arts forum for many artist-run spaces and organizations. The former days of artists buying ads, although not to say controversy was not present, in Artfoum in 1974 as an subversive self-promotional jab at the art world with the masculinity of Robert Morris and masculinity-upon- femininity of Lynda Bengalis seem far from potential outlets today.  Individual advertising efforts seem unproductive and overly romanticist as what is needed to be addressed today.

 

 

Installation view.  Courtesy of the Control Room

Installation view. Courtesy of the Control Room

Courtesy of the Control Room

William Kaminiski. Courtesy of Control Room

Courtesy of the Control Room

Sara Clendening. Courtesy of Control Room

 

Sara Clendening. Courtesy of the Control Room

Michael Parker. Courtesy of Control Room

 

Whereas Control Room’s efforts take on the collective and community acting as an example to acknowledge these gaps while applying working-class promotional aesthetics and rewarding each of their supports with the simple transparent act of their name included in the advertisement, with text size proportionate to their donation. The means of rightfully infiltrating Artforum makes art fun and also makes fun of art, adding necessary humor to what is an interesting and constant paradox of the artists role in the world and the art world-at-large: privilege. The art world a game where we never know who is winning but we continuously seem to pick up and play despite the disproportionate and absurd gestures that may be at hand.

 

 

Fields_Kaminski

Jonathan Fields. Courtesy of Control Room

Jonathan Fields. Courtesy of the Control Room

Devin Kenny. Courtesy of Control Room

Devin Kenny. Courtesy of the Control Room

Christine Wang. Courtesy of Control Room

Michael Parker.  Courtesy of the Control Room

Michael Parker. Courtesy of Control Room

 

The group exhibition as the final outcome featuring Math Bass, Sara Clendening, Jonathan Fields, William Kaminiski, Devin Kenny, Nick Kramer, Adam Mason, Michael Parker, Sally Spitz, and Christine Wang took impressive, simple, and oblique and direct angles to “successfully” address their own personal, political, public relationships to privilege.

 

Control Room
2006 East 7th Street
Los Angeles 90023

 

“The Privilege Show” is on view June 8th- July 14, 2013.  For more information visit here.

 

-Contributed by Brigitte Nicole Grice