Gregor Kuschmirz
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Shopping is for
poor people.
 What and where to buy has become the basic means of cultural expression for most people in industrial imprinted regions.

We hardly ever express ourselves, our group membership, political viewpoint or feelings by dance, music or poetry, but by buying certain clothing, culinary preferences and travelling to hip spots and remote places. Next to the time it takes up to earn the money for such, it also needs time to train one´s senses for newly emerging trends and to spot the next hip destination, time, which instead could have been used e.g. to play a musical instrument or to learn how to tell stories in a notably imaginative way. The increase of buying options and information about products and services complicates decision taking, but rarely really improves those decisions. It seems that, once basic needs are met, quality of life improves dispropotionately to the amount of daily buying decisions.

The works in the selection shopping is for poor people deal in different ways with aspects of market economy. The performance I won’t sell these things took place on a flea market, where Kuschmirz has confronted the public with his most beloved belongings. A billboard calls attention to global trade in the painting Saignon 7, while gigantic pedestrians walk through an urban centre in the foreground. Sales rack turns human flesh into a good for resale and the series doorplates turns fragments taken from sales checks into potential store signs.  
Saigon 7

An acrylic painting about global commerce in urban centres and the impact of algorithms on artistic working conditions:
Before being painted, the motive has been digitally processed in such a way that less artistic skill was needed for it´s realisation, but many more working hours – in comparison to tradiontional painting.| acrylic on wood, 160x80cm, Cologne, 2015/2016
cultural assimilation / fedex / algorithmic painting
 
I won´t sell these things.

A performance and public exhibition of the artist´s best belongings, which took place at a weekly flea-market on Karlsplatz in Stuttgart.
I won ́t sell these things questions the value of personal belongings for individuals by triggering conversations about the flea market economy. | performance, Stuttgart, 2007
dead stock / flea market / personal belongings
 
Doorplates

A series of panels, which display excerpts from sales checks. Via leaving all numbers out they appear like poems about commerce. The typography got unified, while the colors refer to vietnamese street signs and doorplates. | engraved and colored plexiglass, 35 x 48cm, Ho Chi Min City, 2010
poetry of commerce / vietnamese signboards / voucher art  
Things I own twice

A balanced arrangement of some of the artist´s personal belongings. | Various things, Cairo, 2008
belongings / symmetry / wealth  
sales rack (Verkaufsregal)

Synthetic human flesh and organs for sale – budget series.
| screen printing and varnish on packaging + rack, Munich, 2002
alternative cannibalism / ecologic footprint / synthetic meat
1 - 3 according to César Rendueles, Soziophobie, edition suhrkamp, 2015
 
censored bags

A series of shopping bags, which have been differently blackened. | Cairo/Rome/Ho Chi Minh City, 2008-2010
consumer culture / marker art / unmasking by masking
 
All Inclusive-Series

The series could be interpreted as a comment on market-driven art production. It combines abstract painting, photorealistic crowds, clouds copied from old dutch landscape paintings and neon faces with conceptual titles (engraved acrylic plates) on a medium, which are partly canvas, pastly sculpture. Reoccuring elements offer clients a nice range of possible combinations. | 10 paintings, acrylic on wood constructions, custom tailored mass production
Shoot the Messenger!

The compilation “Shoot the Messenger!” deals with the cultural impact of various means of communication.
HYPERPUBLIC

“HYPERPUBLIC” enquires the social functions and artistic potential of public space.
Location based Identity

The selection “Location based Identities” enquires the relevance of sites in the quest for identity.
Rare Window

Rare Window puts videos and video installations into an aesthetic context.