If You Say So Mr Winkleman

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Times are tough in prestigious art burb that is New York’s Chelsea district if the latest exhibition at the Winkleman Gallery (April 3 to May 9) is anything to go by. Entitled "The Reappraisal", artist Jennifer Dalton has, if you believe the press release, catalogued all the stuff in her place and offered it for sale.

“From graduate student paintings to the cleaning supplies under the kitchen sink to the planter in the back yard” everything has a price, and not just one price but three. What the artist thinks its worth, what Christie’s Auction house reckon it’s worth and “your price” i.e. how much you will have to pay to own it. A porcelain vase has been valued at $100 by the artist, $15 by Christies, but “your price” is $1500.00. One can’t help but wonder if this was the motivation for the blog post Three Grumpy Thoughts on the Salander Case a few days earlier?

Prices range from half a million for a trinket of the kitsch variety to the artist paying you $5 to take stuff off her hands. But one still has to pay the rent as the blogging gallerist often alludes too. Hence “The Reappraisal is a meditation on materialism, growing up, and the extent to which we can properly judge ourselves and each other by the contents of our bookshelves, refrigerators and medicine cabinets.”

Come on, no matter how you dress it up, a garage sale is a garage sale.