“Cash For Your Warhol!, 2009”, by Geoff Hargadon (courtesy of the artist and Gallery Kayafas)
Geoff Hargadon is whack, in the best possible way. He observes what we take for granted, what we sometimes cease to notice, turns it on it’s ear, and spits it back at us in a configuration close enough to seem familiar but different enough to nab our attention. He is a genius at parody. His current show, “Warhol Coming Soon!”, presents three distinct bodies of work at Gallery Kayafas in Boston’s South End.
“Schwag (Financial Services #11), 2013”, archival pigment print by Geoff Hargadon (courtesy of the artist and Gallery Kayafas)
In a photographic body of work, Hargadon uses white, GAP-like backgrounds to present individual portraits of “Schwag”, financial and biotech industry give-aways to conventioneers. Usually mundane, these items seem jarringly unrelated to the mission of the companies. This is part of the irony: what do a plush toy, plastic chili pepper, tire pressure gauge or game dice have to do with anything at all? That they are given away, collected and presented like cultural specimens in Hargadon’s pristine commercial images, entreats us to examine the societal values underlying this bizarre custom.
“Cash for your Warhol (Frustrated Artist), 2013”, 8”x8” zinc plate by Geoff Hargadon (courtesy of the artist and Gallery Kayafas)
Hargadon’s two other installations “explore new text-based work aimed at the intersection of money, consumerism, art, and self-image.” Like “Schwag”, these works “reposition and magnify things we might ordinarily ignore, while attempting to change their meaning, purpose and place.” Elevating some of the more amusing and vulgar responses he received from his ubiquitously placed CASH FOR YOUR WARHOL! signs, Hargadon has created zinc wall plates to simultaneously immortalize and mock the phone messages from his hapless callers.
“Tombstones, MoMA, 2013”, archival pigment print by Geoff Hargadon (courtesy of the artist and Gallery Kayafas)
The third project is subtler, yet telling. In it, Hargadon displays groupings of museum wall labels, or “tombstones”, from two vastly different institutions, MoMA in NYC and the Fitchburg Art Museum in MA. Shown without the corresponding artwork, they highlight institutional assumptions and biases. As in all of Hargadon’s work, the glaring message is not the one he’s inviting us to see.
“Tombstones, Fitchburg Art Museum, 2013”, archival pigment print by Geoff Hargadon (courtesy of the artist and Gallery Kayafas)
Gallery Kayafas will be exhibiting the work of Geoff Hargadon and Remi Thornton (reviewed yesterday) through March 1st, 2014. For more information, go to: http://www.gallerykayafas.com/
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