SHOW: "IF ELVIS PRESLEY WAS THE KING, WHO WAS JAMES BROWN?"

 

We are antagonistically delighted to announce that COLL.EO is one of the featured artists in the collective show 'If Elvis Presley was the King, who was James Brown? Antagonizing The Social Through Humor and Irony' curated by David de Rozas and Fred Alvarado and hosted by The Art Gallery at San Francisco State University, San Francisco, California.

The exhibition will run from August 28th till September 25, 2014.

The Opening reception is scheduled for August 28th between 5-8 pm on the Third Floor of the Cesar Chavez Student Center located on 1450 Holloway Ave, San Francisco.

Artists Line-Up

Mark Benson
Carolina Caycedo
COLL.EO
Martin Sammy Gardea
John Leaños
Senalka Mcdonald
Neil “Clavo” Rivas & Lana Dandan
Rafael Suarez
Cassie Thornton
Alex Wang

Image from The Art Gallery, SFSU

Image from The Art Gallery, SFSU

Artists' statements

Curatorial statement

“If Elvis Presley was the King, who was James Brown?” explores the ways in which contemporary artists use humor and irony as strategies to articulate critical and political reflections. The artists who participate in this group exhibition reveal how humor and irony are used to highlight discrimination, war, nationalism, class, power relations, or government policies. Their artworks interpret the world in unconventional ways, offering us new forms of knowledge, experience, and action.

“If Elvis Presley was the King, who was James Brown?” is not a funny show; nor a cynical one. In spite of mass media products, advertisements, and many artworks demonstrate that there’s a thin line between humor/irony and cynicism, the artists who participate in this exhibition don’t cover and ignore; they precisely act and function as a catalysts to uncover and recognized opening negotiations of power with society, daily life, and art itself. This exhibition aims to continue an ongoing conversation where precisely humor and irony play as an antidotes against forget and dismiss, consent and agreement. The artworks displayed in this exhibition demonstrate that the smile is not only the last thing you can wear, and how some art practices continue to be an effective tool to bring into question and engage within our daily life. (David De Rozas & Fred Alvarado)

LINK: The Art Gallery 

SWEATSHOP (AFTER JONAH PERETTI)

Today we are introducing Sweatshop (After Jonah Peretti).

COLL.EO, Sweatshop (After Jonah Peretti), 2014

COLL.EO, Sweatshop (After Jonah Peretti), 2014

For this performance, COLL.EO replayed Jonah Peretti’s seminal performance Sweatshop. In 2001, the Artist attempted to purchase a pair of customized sneakers from the Nike iD shop, an online footwear shop launched in 1999 by Nike Corporation that allowed consumers to customize their footwear in details. Peretti chose to have the word “Sweatshop” embroidered on his shoes, as he “wanted to remember the toil and labor of the children that made [his] shoes” (Peretti, 2001).

In the Summer of 2014, COLL.EO successfully purchased a pair of customized shoes from adidas with the text “SWEATSHOP” embroidered on them, via “mi adidas”, the company’s online sneaker customization tool. Mi adidas “offers a wide selections of colors” that let the customer “mix and match for a shoe that lives up to [their] look”. We chose white and red, the colors of the Indonesian flag, a country that produces adidas shoes. 

FULL TEXT

ARTWORK

COLL.EO MAGAZINE VOL. I & II

We are deighted to announce that CONCRETE PRESS is releasing today the first two issues of COLL.EO magazine.

The fisrt two issues of COLL.EO magazine

The fisrt two issues of COLL.EO magazine

A compendium of COLL.EO’s annual production, the magazines feature content previously available only on colleo.org but also new material, including photographs and documentation. The magazine's format is  8.5 × 11 in. (22 × 28 cm). Fully illustrated and printed on high quality paper, each issue of COLL.EO magazine is available at the price of $19.99.

Edited by Colleen Flaherty and Matteo Bittanti, COLL.EO magazine is published once per year by CONCRETE PRESS and, unlike COLL.EO’s monographs and books, its availability is unlimited.

Volume I details projects developed by COLL.EO in 2012 production, that is Framing Gays in the Military, Disciples, Carjacked, Figurine, and After Cars. Volume II showcases projects developed in 2013, including Remote Play, Domesticated, After Animals, Following Bit, Grand Theft Vito, You Are Dead, The Great Italian Race and Andy Warhol

Volume III (2014) is currently in production and will be released in early 2015.

You can order COLL.EO magazine Volume I and Volume II on Blurb.com.

CITY MEMORY

Today, we are releasing our new project: City Memory, consisting of 48 square picture cards, forming 24 matching pairs, each measuring 2.4'' x 2.4'' (60mm x 60mm), and a set of Instructions. City Memory is part of COLL.EO's Instructional Devices series, which includes City Blocks (2014).

COLL.EO, City Memory, 2014

COLL.EO, City Memory, 2014

City Memory is a matching pairs game for players of all ages (but not of all incomes) with easy to understand rules and fascinating images, based on COLL.EO's A New American Dream (2014).

CIty Memory is an enlighting and entertaining card-laying game that brings together players of different social and economic strata. Depicting San Francisco's urban scenes captured by Google robo-cameras between 2009 and 2013 and subsequently made available via Google Street View, City Memory illustrates the evolution - and devolution - of the metropolitan landscape, social mobility vs. physical immobility, and the persistence of wealth inequality in the age of digital reproducibility.

Enjoy!

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