New ambitious exhibition, The Supermarket of Images at Jeu de Paume Museum, Paris.

Feb 13

On the 10th Februrary, I had a pleasure to attend new ambitious exhibition, The Supermarket of Images at Jeu de Paume, Paris. Thanks for the invitation from our dear friend artist Kevin Abosch who also exhibits at the “ Values” section with two of his artworks “ IAMACOIN” and “Personal Effects (2018).

The whole show is striking in terms of its purpose, originality, the multidisciplinary nature and its scale, since it occupies the entire exhibition space. A first for the institution, I guess thanks to the new director Quentin Bajac, former chief curator of photography at MoMA.

The Supermarket of Images, aims to show and reflect on what images are today, particularly through their economic, social and ecological impact.

The main curator Peter Szendy, Professor of Comparative Literature and Humanities at Brown University, as well as Emmanuel Alloa and Marta Ponsa did an amazing job.

In “Le Supermarche du Visible” the book written by Peter Szendy, from which the exhibition is inspired, the economic aspect of the life of images is called “iconomy”.
The works and artists chosen for the exhibition cast a keen and watchful eye over these issues. On the one hand, they reﬂect the upheavals that currently affect the economy in general, whether in terms of unprecedentedly large storage spaces, the scarcity of raw materials, labour and its mutations into intangible forms, or in terms of value and its new manifestations, such as cryptocurrencies.

A selection of multi-disciplinary works has therefore been arranged, as a journey through a "supermarket of images" where each piece is positioned at the crossroads of these questions. Through 5 major sections: "Stocks", "Materials", "Work", "Values" and "Exchanges", the visitor will then be able to reflect on the impact that images have today. By including an older work in each section, it demonstrates that some of the burning questions are up to date. However, the impact they have on our way of life and communication, makes us fully appreciate the modernity of exhibition’s purpose.

More information you can find here http://jeudepaume.org/pdf/Petit-Journal-Lesupermarchedesimages.pdf

The exhibition is open from 11.02.2020 - 7.06.2020