Berlin-based Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset are the team who provided an animatronic sparrow in its death throes at Tate Modern in 2004, a re-created New York Metro station at the Bohen Foundation last Spring, and most recently, a Prada boutique in the middle of the Texan desert. Their brand of clever structural critique fused with an exploration of issues around public and private space and socio-economic systems prompts a second look at everything from left luggage in an airport to gay bars to the possible permutations of the white cube. Elmgreen & Dragset’s touring exhibition, The Welfare Show, is currently at the Serpentine Gallery (till 26/02).

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As coined and defined by Ryan Watkins-Hughes in 2004 (documentation)

SHOPDROPPING is an ongoing project in which I alter the packaging of canned goods and then shopdrop the items back onto grocery store shelves. I replace the packaging with labels created using my photographs. The shopdropped works act as a series of art objects that people can purchase from the grocery store. Because the barcodes and price tags are left intact purchasing the cans before they are discovered and removed is possible. In one instance the shopdropped cans were even restocked to a new aisle based on the barcode information.

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Rirkrit Tiravanija’s Untitled 1992 (Free), was originally exhibited at 89 Greene Street in the former 303
Gallery space in 1992. 303 Gallery was on the second floor at 89 Greene Street, just a few feet from Matta- Clark’s Open House site. In that exhibition, Tiravanija took the contents of the entire gallery – kitchen, storeroom, bathroom and office – and publicly deposited/displayed them in the main gallery space. In what had been the gallery office, he set up a provisional kitchen where Thai curry was cooked and served to visitors. Taking his historical cues not only from distinctly non-Western Thai traditions, but also from Alan Kaprow, Michael Asher, and Matta-Clark, Tiravanija’s seminal exhibition helped create a pivitol moment of rupture from the wealth and abundance of the previous decade. For this exhibition, Tiravanija will make a ghost of the 89 Greene Street space in plywood. The kitchen – which will include the same stools, tables, cookers, pots, pans, and refrigerator, along with the same 15-year old food waste – will be used and shown in what will be the “office.” Untitled 1992  (Free) will be exhibited for the first time in New York since 1992.

The a-z smockshop generates income for artists who’s work is either non-commercial, or not yet self sustaining. The smocks are designed by Andrea Zittel and produced by a group of smockers who reinterpret the design based on their own individual skill sets, tastes and interests. And of course as we craft the smocks we are also working on a “guide for better working”.

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The Paul Piers Collection was born from piles of clothing left behind in a warehouse terminal market abandoned in the mid 1980s. In 1999, a squatter named RA discovered the endless piles of clothing and began refurbishing and selling wholesale to vintage clothing stores around Williamsburg and the East Village under the auspices of Paul Pierce Vintage. It is this reality that Riley spins into a poignant and humorous multi-layered commentary on the art and fashion worlds, gentrification and the changing topography of New York City. Inspired by the true story of RA’s entrepreneurial efforts, the installation becomes an embellished realization of unwrought potential. By 2004 Paul Pierce had grown into an operation that employed and housed 16 other non-domicile people. They eventually occupied a retail store in Williamsburg and began expanding and merchandizing their inventory.

The warehouse (located in Greenpoint, Brooklyn) was recently destroyed by massive fires of undetermined causes, displacing a group of squatters that occupied the space. Playing on the questionable investigation into the fires, absurdity of motives such as designer Paul Piers intentionally setting fire to clothes to launch a new, trendy burnt look abound. This burnt look will be modeled at WHITE BOX during the opening reception. [VIDEO BOX], a division of WHITE BOX, will include a mock video mimicking the style of celebrity newsreels. All of the actors are former squatters from the warehouse building that burnt down.Duke Riley presents Paul Piers for Chanel, curated by Juan Puntes and Judith Souriau, is the last and final chapter ending a six-year long WHITE BOX Summer Series under the umbrella title Six Feet Under. more

Peter Paul Chocolates, Edibles By Paul McCarthy: chocolate factory

Conceived by artist Paul McCarthy, and done in collaboration with his gallery Hauser & Wirth, the gallery has been divided into four sections: retail store, chocolate manufacturing, packaging and storage. The factory will then produce 1,000 ‘Santa With Tree And Bell’ chocolate figurines – complete with signature Paul McCarthy phallic innuendo – on a daily basis to be on sale to the public until 24th December, when the show closes.

NANCY SHAVER: Retail, sculpture and objects from Henry

Nancy Shaver is a sculptor and runs a store in Hudson, NY named Henry.
The following excerpts from a text by Ann Lauterbach for an upcoming catalog on the artist and shopkeeper, refers to both.

We, Nancy and I, share a love of necessary objects; objects that were made of necessity, in need.

With a purpose in mind.
With, sometimes, limited material means.

We believe, also, that art is necessary.

The necessity of art is somehow implicated in the relationship between materials and purpose.

There is a fine line between purpose and use.
Nancy and I share a pleasure in these fine lines.
…
Worn objects are the material equivalent of wise. This thought has been with me since the first flea market.

It has nothing to do with the frippery of antiques, nothing to do with the advancement of investment, nothing to do with Roadshow inheritance.
…
Well if nothing else, art has given me a way to live, she said one day as I was leaving Henry’s inventory of foundlings.
…
A Minimalist instruction: material and process revelatory of each other. Making as content.

“Stealing Beauty” was shot without permission at numerous IKEA stores around New York, Berlin and Tel Aviv. In the movie the Ben-Ners quite naturally inhabit idealized showroom interiors with price tags dangling from furniture, and shoppers occasionally interrupting the family’s daily routines. Because of the hit-and-run filming, the traditional cinematic continuity is abandoned and the changing sets are stand-ins for their home. The narrative, however, remains linear as the father offers life lessons on the subjects of economic exchange, meaning of private property, ethics, and family love eventually leading to the children’s rebellious manifesto.

Art in General
Tribeca / Downtown
Invited to reconsider Claes Oldenburg’s The Store (1961), a shop in
downtown New York furnished with an array of consumer goods the artist
fashioned out of everyday materials to reference food, clothing and
other consumable goods, Fawn Krieger proposed COMPANY (2007).
Conceptually structured as a social and economic project, COMPANY is
an installation and unfolding sculpture in Art in General’s
storefront, street-level exhibition space that will operate as a store
showcasing homemade renditions of recognizable items, with prices
marked from two to two thousand dollars. Gallery visitors will have
the opportunity to buy sculptural objects including ceramic Xanax; a
foam mother tree sloth; a papier-mâché TV; a wooden computer; plaster
enriched uranium; a concrete Baked Alaska; faux dinosaur eggs, ersatz
glacier chunks, cardboard passports, knitted nervous systems, leather
band-aids, and tin foil eye glasses. see more products here