Corporate Logo
Art in General, New York, USA
Judi Werthein’s installation Corporate Logo (2007) consists of a newly designed logo (a slick contemporary ‘ag’ glyph) which Art in General has assumed as its official logo for use on its stationery and website, as well as the signage and flag on the building’s exterior. The centrepiece of this project is an installation consisting entirely of wall-to-wall carpeting, repeatedly printed with this logo, and installed in Art in General’s largest gallery. The result bears – almost, but not completely – no resemblance to any corporate lobby that I’ve personally set foot in. Anyway, the nice thing about corporate lobbies is that they occasionally have some good art in them (or a Frank Stella).
The greater irony here is that Art in General is only a few blocks away from Deitch Projects which – with its parades, TV shows, and Brillo box-style logo – is one of the most brazenly ‘branded’ and gleefully commercial galleries in the business. At any rate, artists and art spaces have been dealing with branding issues for years. Everything that Werthein’s project dryly asserts has either been previously presented with more style, panache, and wit, or else was obvious anyway. The 7-Eleven chain’s recent transformation of 16 of its locations nationwide into Simpsons-esque ‘Kwik-E-Marts’ was more complex, visual, and subversive.
Still, the really bizarre – and, perhaps, not particularly ironic – thing about Corporate Logo is just how self-reflexively accurate this exhibition is as branding. That is, this sort of vaguely political and dryly conceptual art is exactly what I expect Art in General to show. This is so perfectly tautological that it’s ridiculous: art as the art-institution’s branding as quintessential institutional-type art. Yet while I don’t like it, I have to admit that there is something ineffably pleasing about this symmetry. By taking it as a self-parody or an (incomparably dry) institutional critique (of Art in General itself), we might even be able to attribute some real audacity or self-critical balls to this project. But that’s assuming that it’s both deliberately ironic and self-reflexive and that this irony – in itself – can somehow redeem an almost wholly execrable project.
Elwyn Palmerton
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