TRANSFER presents Weird Capitalism, an exhibition of new works by artists Alan Butler (IE) and Alan Warburton (UK), curated by Nora O Murchú. There will be a press preview of the exhibition on Saturday, September 8 from 4:30-6pm, followed immediately by a public reception from 6-8pm. The exhibition continues through November 3rd, 2018.
Work, work, work, work, work, work
You see me I be work, work, work, work, work, work
There's something 'bout that work, work, work, work, work, work
Work, work, work, work, work, work
From endless content production to administrative bloat, today's conditions of labor ask us to exert not just cognitive and emotional, but existential labor. Economic transactions disguise themselves as experiences, and surplus value comes in the forms of retweets, reposts, and algorithmically configured trends. Work has moved beyond the merging of play and labour and instead operates at an uncanny closeness to our corporeal forms.
Work transforms us. Work contorts us. Work bends us. To live in strange worlds. Fit new ideals. To constantly consume ourselves, spreading its banality across virtually every aspect of our daily lives.
Weird Capitalism examines the awkward tendencies, the absurd and weird conditions of rapid economic expansion, and the social change that 100%, 24/7 Full Employment brings about. Bringing together the work of two artists - Alan Butler and Alan Warburton - their work examines the inescapable structures of capitalism we are firmly embedded within and our complicity within them.
In Homo Economicus, a collection of new video works, Warburton explores how men working in London's financial district both modify and commodify their own bodies. In each of the works, the artist inflates and deflates 3D characters and the pitch of their voices to conflate the corporate and the corporeal, and question male self-worth and its apparent apotheosis in the hyper-competitive financial services industry.
Butler's new series, The Enthusiasts, includes mixed-media sculptures that contain computer generated videos, light-emitting devices, reproductions of paintings, found objects, and an array of other cultural artifacts that are housed together in fast-food delivery backpacks. The works explore ideas about new economies, video games, precarity, and the nature of work in the internet age.
Weird Capitalism explores the peculiar tendencies of new modes of work that the smooth logic of capitalism sells us. The work in this exhibition is presented not as an attempt to develop alternatives to our current modes of employment, but explores the part of capitalist structure that is only open for negotiation through its own language.
The exhibition will be accompanied by an essay by Nora O Murchú.
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