Brand new2018

This groundbreaking book, accompanying a major exhibition at the Hirshhorn, tells the story of the evolution of New York's downtown art scene in the 1980s' from a DIY counterculture in the East Village to a legitimate gallery business in SoHo. Coinciding with the rise of modern branding and the onset of the information age, artists' focus on commodities and consumerism began as satire but came to be much more complex: commodities and associated phenomena, such as advertising, now served as vessels for ideas, politics, and personal relationships in 'brand-new' types of painting, sculpture, photography, installation, and performance. In a book full of visual surprises, newly commissioned essays shed new light on this pivotal period: curator Gianni Jetzer provides a comprehensive overview,...