rainer ganahl karl marx visits david zwirner on 20th street BLINKY PALERMO

index

COMME des MARXISTS -- White Columns, New York 2013 / Performa, 2013

Cat Walk - White Columns, New York / Peroforma 2013

Intallation view - White Columns, New York

karl marx

other projects

about this work text

KARL MARX VISITS DAVID ZWIRNER ON 20TH STREET

- upfront: I visited david zwirner gallery ... and saw two fabulous shows by palermo and richard serra (early works)

Capitalism today takes on many forms and goes through many transformations. Art is a perfect vehicle for moving big moneywith a minimum of formality, rules and regulations and a maximum of intransparency and secrecy. Art collecting on that level is for many people throwing blue chip dices that never lose their value. Some dead and some living artists are perfect media to lubricate that exchange for sublime mehrwert/surplus value production. With the arrival of wall street and hedge fund money as well as that of investment fonds, Russian and Asian taicoons in a gloabal market - Basel Miami, Basel Hongkong, Basel Switzerland - the rules of the game have changed. Dealers too have to be on the move spreading locations world wide with Gagosian Gallery leading the pack. David Zwirner - who I really like - entered this game and needed to grow as big as otherse if he didn't want to be swallowed and compet on this top level. He really does and does it with style and a beautiful new musuem style gallery building in Chelesea on 20th street. On my last visit in June, he showed Palermo and early works of Richard Serra - two amazing shows !!!!

zwirner's Palermo show

KARL MARX VISIST DAVID ZWIRNER ON 20TH STERET, BLINKY PALERMO, LATE WORKS …
It is a simplistic common place that Marx is associated with the economically lower segments of our society thought his analysis concerns all strata of society. Given the fact that art really knows no limits, it is also an economic platform catering to the richest and most privileged segments of our society and its fairytale end of collecting and art consumption. In the recent decade or so a new class a art dealership has established itself very visibly with a multitude of grandiose large and impressive spaces that spread out over the richest global capitals in USA, Europe and Asia. These new international enterprises are primarily showcasing the really expensive art of mostly living artist with global name recognition and spectacular pricing for the really, really rich to compete for. David Zwirner is part of this mega gallery complex with an additional space in London. When I visited his just newly opened stunningly beautiful second or third space in New York that could rival with the looks and size of a museum on 20th street, I saw Late Works by Blinky Palermo and Early works by Richard Serra that inspired me for some fashion work with this title.

For my works on Palermo, a German painter who died very young in the 1970s and left only a small body of works, I silk screened some of the color combinations and designs I saw at the gallery on Japanese fine cotton and silk. Some of the fabrics were reworked as simple drapery to give the impression of canvases. Playing witth the original title of Palermo’s artworks the works got the titles KARL MARX VISIST DAVID ZWIRNER ON 20TH STERET, BLINKY PALERMO, LATE WORKS, The enigma of Karl, 1976/2013; or …. Who knows the beginning of the revolution and who knows the end, 1976/2013. KARL MARX VISIST DAVID ZWIRNER ON 20TH STERET, BLINKY PALERMO, LATE WORKS, Manhattan Marxism, 1976/2013 draws on the painting Manhattan and is made into 70s style pants and mini skirts which revealed that proximity of the painter’s pallet to the colors of his time. The silk screen printing of the silk foulards were taken from a drawing series “Untitled (for Barbette), 1976 and was named …Untitled, (For Rosa Luxenburg), 1976 / 2013, the German revolutionary who was assassinated in Berlin in 1919. With the exception of the foulards, each individual work had the rather long titles and the orignal art work printed on the pieces as if a commercial logo.

Given the values of these artworks I referred to and the fact that they were directly related to such a high profile gallery I asked artist friends to model the Richard Serra Early Work pieces. I was able to engage next to others artists David Coleman, Peter Fend, Leigh Ledare, Wolfgang Maier and Ingo Niermann. For presenting the Blinky Palermo Late Work garments and foulards I asked ladies from the art world who might have been able to meet Palermo before he passed away at age 33 due to his drug consumption. sThea Westreich, Jacqueline Burckhardt, Bice Curiger, Shelly Arons, Linda Yablonsky and Janice Guy modeled who all know a lot about the world of art and its inner workings.

about this work

KARL MARX VISIST DAVID ZWIRNER ON 30TH STERET, BLINKY PALERMO, LATE WORKS