Fashion + Art = 7 For All Mankind
2009

The Return of PopCo! e Modaface
Metal, display case, coroplast, vinyl lettering

Floor pieces
Concrete aggregate, metal, wood, paper

Displayed at 7 For All Mankind, Atlanta store, as part of 7FAM + NADA Fashion + Art promotion

This Saturday 17 October, Atlanta artists Ben Roosevelt and Stan Woodard are making an intervention into 7 For All Mankind’s Lenox Square Mall store.  Drawing and commenting on the commercial and sensory elements of the ‘mall experience,’ the artists are creating new works which seek to quietly infiltrate the world of the shopper.

Ben Roosevelt has created a new set of images based on surveillance photos in Lenox Square itself.  In a limited edition of modified 7 For All Mankind bags, Roosevelt has altered them with scenes of innocuous
spaces and objects, turning the unnoticed and in-between parts of the mall into iconic stencil-like images.  Hidden throughout the store, for customers to discover as they browse, are further images of fellow mall-goers, captured in various states of wandering, looking, and consuming.  As with the rest of Roosevelt’s practice, his work here enacts a revealing reversal, by making a bold iconography out of the mundane and interstitial.

Stan Woodard creates a similar paradox, but here more directly confronts the commercial context of the exhibition.  Woodard presents a line of faux-jewelry and home accessories which are well suited for their surroundings.  These are labeled and productized, but his merchandise is rusty nails, battered metal discs, and hunks of concrete. Woodard attempts a wry double-take, commenting on the process of commodification - whether in ‘life’ or ‘art’- that directly involves both the artist and the viewer, where discarded, forgotten, non-art materials can be presented as crafted artifacts and enter into the commercial sphere.

Chris Fite-Wassilak, Curator. October 10, 2009

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