C A R T
“The average American makes two trips to buy groceries each week, making supermarkets, mini-marts, and corner stores essential and incredibly influential parts of our everyday lives. All items are bought and sold at these stores using money. Money is earned through labor, and labor comes in countless different packages, much like our food. Through our labor we are inspired and we are exploited. We progress and we are repressed. We survive.
Art is created through labor, but unlike some of the more negative forms labor takes, art stimulates our minds, challenges our imaginations, and expands our vision for the world. Art is at the center of humanity’s continuous evolution, but it remains extraordinarily undervalued by mainstream American society, which is almost solely focused on the seemingly endless cycle of labor and consumption. This limited view of life is slowly eliminating our ability to imagine, dream, and think freely.
Through C A R T, Current Space is positing that art is not optional, but essential. It affects all of us internally, whether we are aware of it or not, and it should therefore be considered as fundamental to our daily lives as the products we purchase at grocery stores every week. Therefore, Current Space will be transformed into a fully functional mini-supermarket, complete with aisles, window displays, shopping baskets, and cash registers in an attempt to explore the exchange of artists’ labor for profit in a familiar, everyday setting.”
I almost submitted something to this show until I got self-conscious/lazy and didn’t. Going to see others’ work would still be a good idea, though. On a semi-relevant note, I think it’s interesting that the first paragraph mentions that the average American visits the grocery store twice a week. I only go maybe once a month when I run out of pasta or my roommates pizza leftovers, so I just figured that’s what everyone else did too. Oh well.
I would love to list every fine artist appearing in this show but there are so many it would stretch the page too much.
Anyway!
Saturday, July 9
Current Gallery
421 N. Howard
Baltimore, MD
