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Advertisement for Bruce Thorn exhibition at MoMA
Advertisement for Bruce Thorn Sotheby's auction
Obama with "The Philosopher", autographed
"The Optimist" hanging in MOMA stairwell, 2009
Bruce Thorn's "Oregon" at MOMA, 2009
Madonna with "Cloud Nine" in Los Angeles MOCA, 2007
Oprah Winfrey at the Art Institute of Chicago, 2009, with Thorn's "Magic Feeling"
Stevie Wonder lost in "Cosmogony" in Paris Louvre, 2006
"Bob Marley, 1979, at Tate Modern contemplates "Night Life"
PRESS RELEASE
FANTASY EXHIBITION SERIES
Event Date: Sunday, March 1, 2009
The Fantasy Exhibition Series conscripts conceptual art, appropriation and painting to explore and confront systems of valuation of artists and their work. It asks why works by a relatively small number of artists are valued so highly while the works of other artists have absolutely no market at all. Is value a reflection of intrinsic merits of particular works, the artist’s position in the continuum of history, or the result of elaborative marketing and asset strategies of the wealthy? This will be an ongoing and international investigation.
How can one determine the significance and fair value of art works? Is there such a thing as authenticity in art, or is the whole game a charade? Is the entire art star system a huge bubble on the verge of collapse, a sophisticated Ponzi scheme? Is the public being well served by the current system? Can deserving artists get any exposure in this system, or are they all doomed to obscurity?
Chicago based artist Bruce Thorn appropriates and parodies art world dynamics in the service of raising these questions. By transferring questions of value, authenticity and intrinsic worth from artists and art objects onto museums, galleries, collections and auction houses, we have a new way of looking in from the outside.
The current presentation formats of the Fantasy Exhibition Series are contemporary and populist, existing only in cyberspace via email and documented on small edition (five each) Epson Archival prints. The paintings presented on the Fantasy Exhibition announcements are also presented along with these prints.
Bruce Thorn’s Fantasy Exhibition Series begins with a celebration at the artist’s open studio in Chicago on Sunday, March 1, 2009 to celebrate the first two Fantasy Exhibitions:
MOMA, opening May 1st, 2009 and running through Dec. 31, 2009.
Sotheby’s, March 13, 2009 Contemporary Art Evening Auction Fantasy has a pre-auction estimate of
9-12 million dollars for the painting “Key Hole.”