URBAN HUNTER
Martinka Bobríková and Oscar de Carmen
Curator: Katarina Slaninová
Opening: 17.4. 2013 / Wednesday / 17.00
The exhibition runs until 02.06.2013
SALON - Nitra Gallery, Župné námestie 3, Nitra
more on: www.nitrianskagaleria.sk
The project explores the issues of current patterns of production, consumption and over-production. Special interest is placed on the consequences occurring in connection with legislation and the quality policies existing in supermarkets and their relation to a consumer. In an effort to draw attention to the issues of over-production and waste of food, the artists have long been preoccupied with their ecological, research-based project; at the end of the day the artists collect food from supermarket dumpsters and eat it as a part of their daily diet. In the course of their research, they have found several historical references with social relations connected with this re-interpretation of a scavenger as a hunter. Placing themselves within what we could name a modern-day social and economic status, their treasure is waste, which has a symbolic value as it has no other value for society, a hidden treasure. For others, they eat carrion, considering the foodstuffs legitimately thrown out by the supermarkets as inedible. The representation of presented works has been determined by the context in which they are shown - institutional territory of contemporary art - gallery. The artists act as if they were collectors; they adopt a fictitious objectivity mode in their presentation. Helped by historical perspective, they build a collection based on copies of works of art featuring the theme of hunting; the masterpieces they have chosen are The Gleaners by Jean-François Millet, Basket of Fruit by Caravaggio, Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson and Der Freischütz by Carl Maria von Weber. By means of re-appropriation and re-purposing of selected artworks, the artists hide the primary information about the work itself.
