Patriotic or not — and whether done on impulse, for recreation or for basic survival needs — shopping is usually a social activity, a point duly emphasized in Mr. Hollein’s show, which he organized with Christoph Grunenberg, the director of Tate Liverpool.

With this in mind, the Belgian artist Guillaume Bijl’s installation ”New Supermarket” (2002) makes the point in ”Shopping” that perhaps no place is as inclusive or as democratic as a supermarket. It can make everything from salami to fruit cocktail more desirable. But Mr. Bijl’s work also calls attention to the psychological and emotional distance that the slick presentation of goods can put between longing and gratification. In Frankfurt, Mr. Bijl’s full-scale, walk-through replica of a Tengelmann store (a German chain) was complete with stacked shelves, a dairy case, check-out counters and printed posters that help make food buying cheerful (as well as lucrative for a store’s owners). In Liverpool, Mr. Bijl will recreate a British supermarket.

His life-as-art exercise is Duchampian in the extreme. Still, it has historical antecedents, and ”Shopping” features some of them. One is a re-creation of ”The American Supermarket,” a 1964 Pop Art show-as-event to which Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist, Robert Watts and others contributed. Drawing from photographs of its original installation at the now-defunct Bianchini Gallery in Manhattan, this version of the supermarket reassembles its foods that were made of wax or chrome. Porterhouse steaks, cheeses, eggs, apples and bananas are displayed in fruit crates and on white shelves. Warhol’s paintings of Campbell’s soup cans, Lichtenstein’s picture of a turkey and ”real” supermarket signs make the setup feel theatrical. Viewed in a museum today, though, the exhibit’s piped-in Muzak of the 60’s tempers its humor with a strange chill. (This art ”environment” feels as airless as Jeff Koons’s pristine Hoover vacuum cleaners from the 1980’s, which are on view elsewhere in the show in dust-free, clear-acrylic boxes.) from nyt

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