Point of Sale: Methods of Vending Identity

Caroline Picard, OM SO CLEAN OM SO  (edition of 500), 2013
cut-out collage drawings construction paper, white-out, fluorescent pen, permanent pen
All images courtesy of Elizabeth Woodward Photography
Featuring
Zayde Buti
Marc Bradley Johnson
Lane Brandon Phelps
Caroline Picard
Mike Vance

Exhibition
May 2 - July 4, 2013

Reception
Thursday, May 2, 6 - 9pm

Performance by Zayde Buti
Thursday, June 6, 7 pm

Rooftop BBQ
Thursday, July 4th, 6pm

Press Release













The group exhibition Point of Sale turns a contemporary art gallery into a retail mart. The artists each sell commercially wrapped packages of self identity, examining the acceleration on entrepreneurialism in the art world and the ever moving line between mass-production and the handmade.  Does this shift undermine the assumed uniqueness of fine art objects and minimize the artist's hand in the work?
Intersecting promotion, performance, and celebrity, Zayde Buti is a Boston based musician and performance/video artist.  Buti promotes mock brands and burlesques catch phrases like "Hot N Juicy" and "i'm lovin it".  In 2011, Buti's alter ego "Bud Wiser" launched GOYSA, an energy drink company (Get Off Your Sorry Ass).  Buti is an alumnus of Mass College of Art's Studio for Interrelated Media program. 
Raised Mormon, Marc Bradley Johnson's work examines the eternal nature of humans and the potential for immortality through earthy actions.  Johnson received his BFA from Brighman Young University in Utah.  He recently received controversy when his work, a refrigerator filled with vials of his semen, was blocked from public interaction during his thesis exhibition at the School of Visual Arts, where he is currently pursuing his MFA.

 Operating under the title Cosmic Giant, Lane Brandon Phelps has organized, curated, and stage-managed multi-media concerts, including Hollow Earth Radio's Magma Fest (Seattle, WA) and the Olympia Experimental Music Festival (Olympia, WA). Cosmic Giant also produces limited edition artist-designed buttons and other small products sold in repurposed vending machines.  Phelps graduate from Montserrat College of Art in 2005.
Caroline Picard is a Chicago based artist, writer, and curator who explores the figure in relation to systems of power.  Picard's ongoing series of packaged drawings tracks the inherited characteristics between celebrity and branding innovation.  Picard founded The Green Lantern Gallery and Press in 2005, where she continues to publish slow-media books.  She is the Managing Editor for Bad at Sports Blog and writes regularly for Art ltd., Art21, and Artslant.
Based in Portland, ME, Mike Vance is an illustrator and sign-painter.  Vance's projects go beyond the commercial, including a hand constructed ice cream truck, a repurposed vending machine and more.  Ironic and vibrant, Vance revitalizes discarded objects with painted text and illustrations.  Mike Vance is an alumnus of Montserrat College of Art '10.  This is his second collaboration with 17 Cox

Caroline Picard, Happiness Machines, 2012 | Mike Vance, Orgoswap, 2013 | Marc Bradley Johnson, Take This Sperm and Be Free of Me, 2013
Images courtesy of Elizabeth Woodward

Press