YET ANOTHER GROUP SHOW MERLIN CARPENTER WAS IN
THIS
MAKE YOUR
OWN LIFE
"Merlin Carpenter asked the ICA Philadelphia,
the original venue for this exhibition, to provide him with $4,000
cash. After some difficulty this was handed over a few days before
the show opened. Neither the curator nor the ICA were told what
the money was for. The artist then went on a wild shopping spree
enjoying luxurious goods and services, with only the receipts
and empty shopping bags exhibited. This project had nothing to
do with Cologne."
j
above: Make Your Own Life, 2006. Shopping bags
and receipts.
MAKE YOUR OWN LIFE: Artists In & Out of Cologne
was curated by Bennett Simpson and organised by and first shown
at the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia, from April 21st - July 31st, 2006. It then toured
to Toronto, Seattle and Miami. The quote above is the wall text
intended for this tour.
below: works L-R by Charline von Heyl, Merlin Carpenter,
Blake Rayne and Albert Oehlen; photos by Aaron Igler with thanks
"...Merlin Carpenter drops his own pile of empty
shells on the ICA floor. This is in the form of several bags from
luxury clothes, music and other stores: leftovers from his $4K
exhibition budget with which Carpenter bought items for himself
and others. With this confrontational switch of the terms of production
to those of consumption, Carpenter performs his complicity with
the social's constitution in the sphere of commodity exchange.
All historicizing aims are denied the means of good faith recollection,
which frame social relations anterior to the market's function
as merely objectified in its purview.Carpenter's work
teeters between a reiteration of an already achieved reification
and an inimitably acute rendering of the potential for insubordination
to the demand that one perform to the super-ego like imperative
to "Make Your Own Life"..." - Sam Lewitt, Club
You Can't Get Into, Texte zur Kunst, September 2006
Others in this exhibition included: Bernadette Corporation,
Cosima von Bonin, Stephan Dillemuth / Nils Norman, Uwe Gabriel,
Thomas Kalthoff, Kiron Khosla, Hans-Jörg Mayer, Matthias
Schaufler, Barbara Schüttpelz, Vivian Slee, Josef Strau,
Ulrich Strothjohann, Vincent Tavenne, Iskender Yediler, Michaela
Eichwald, Filmgruppe West, Andrea Fraser, Kim Gordon, Charline
von Heyl, Gareth James with Roe Ethridge, Mike Kelley... zzzzzzz...
Martin Kippenberger, Jutta Koether, Michael Krebber, Louise Lawler,
Lucy McKenzie, Christian Philipp Müller, Nils Norman, Albert
Oehlen, Stephen Prina, Josephine Pryde, Blake Rayne, Renna Spaulings,
Rosemarie Trockel, and Christopher Williams and Wool.
j