“Don’t Stop Object Shopping”
Mike Leavitt solo show
opens Saturday March 21, 2009 7-10pm
runs until April 18, 2009
Fuse Gallery: 93 2nd Avenue (between 5th & 6th Streets); NYC, NY 10003
subway: F train to 2nd Avenue
212-777-7988
Mike Leavitt’s March 2009 show at New York’s Fuse Gallery signals an art market shift. The Seattle artist has a nostalgic foot locker of shoes accurately replicated in cardboard, from ladies pumps to ’80’s sneakers. The cardboard shoe show will be installed like a thrift shop with Leavitt’s famous action figures, trading cards, Barack Obama pieces, wood carvings, and other small collectibles. Leavitt will also show two collaboration pieces with “bag painter” Chris Crites and the notorious counter-culture ceramicist Charles Krafft. Traditionally distasteful, modest and hokey objects consciously designed for sales are suddenly timely in the art world.
Mike Leavitt participates in an art movement that’s maturing with impeccable timing. Designer toys, hand-made prints, tattoo parlors, skate shops, street art, and hand-made kitsch are melting together to consume the art market from the bottom up. Inexpensive but technical works are being keenly tailored for broad appeal. The proverbial nose can no longer be thumbed at small art and affordable sales. Between high art and a crumbling economy, Leavitt finds common ground when he goes back to the basics. Wood shop, kitchen craft, and figurative representation produce his shoe culture milestones. Cheap, disposable material makes an expensive product, oddly resembling the manufacturing of boutique footwear. Yet the labor makes Leavitt’s shoes into art, not shoes. The cardboard shoes are built durable enough to wear, but even the rigid construction would succumb to a few drops of rain. They’re not competitive with the shoe market, but with a clientele that’s changing the way people buy art. Commercial viability is an urgent reality, not just satire or critique.
Via
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