“AMERICAN COLORS” PSJM 

 

 

The artistic team PSJM, based in Berlin, is known for behaving like a commercial brand of theoretical and plastic products that uses the procedures of cognitive capitalism to reveal its dangerous contradictions. On Thursday, September 9, PSJM presents its latest project American Colors at the Blanca Soto Gallery, the reduced version of which could already be seen at the Lucas Carrieri Gallery in Berlin and simultaneously with the Madrid exhibition will be part of the Mediations Biennale of Poznañ (Poland).

 

American Colors, a new project that revolves around minimalist geometric abstraction but which we could refer to as “critical abstraction”.

 

American Colors, a series of different tables that uses the 5 colors conventionally applied to races and submits their composition to the census percentage of population, prison population or poverty index by ethnicity in each country. Formalist language is rethought, going beyond intuitive compositions or those conditioned by meaningless arithmetric or geometric progressions, so that here it is statistics, not at all abstract but equally mathematical, that dictates the percentage of each color used in the painting. Color is used in such a way that it carries meaning, conceptually linked to the use of language to refer to different races. They are therefore pictures that are read. The title of each painting, for example "USA population by race" or "USA prison population by race" leads the viewer to a vision that is quite different from the one they might initially have when contemplating these artistic objects that, in their execution, formica on wood, it reproduces the finishes of the design lifestyle.

 

The raw material processed by the knowledge society is information and it is precisely this that is the basis for “American Colors”, a project where infographics, the minimalist object, the painting of North American color fields and interior design come together to the sociological and anthropological study to result in a critical reflection.

 

American Colors Style Site

 

Rethinking minimalism involves focusing on its popularization as design style and therefore on its inclusion in the market. A sphere in which lifestyles have become the preferred merchandise for a system that intends to love us through the communication of its brands and the aestheticized appearance of its products.

 

American Colors Style Site It is proposed here to create a sociopoetic installation whose axis is constituted by a carpet that transfers the image that previously occupied the wall. The coldness and cruelty of statistics and language take on a new meaning here since the installation functions as an "example" of how to place the product on offer (USA poverty rate by race). The work se  fills with meaning once the acquisition and disposition process in the hypermodern house is completed. Our lifestyle, consumerist, aestheticized and comfortable, rests on problems of inequality and oppression that we can only see as images.