Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser.     FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE  September 24 - October 29, 2009 | Reception: Thursday, September 24, 6-8PM DAVID BASKIN Seasonal Variations Negotiating the uncertain border between the art object and consumerism, David Baskin’s recent sculpture explores the underlying agendas inherent in the “formal” properties of everyday consumer goods. In the age old battle of turning wants into needs, advertising agencies, designers and producers increasingly incorporate sophisticated aesthetic strategies to entice the public towards their particular brand.  Vaguely resembling ordinary and ubiquitous products like cars, vacuum cleaners, and shampoo bottles, Baskin begins with the objects themselves, making molds and casts directly from their forms, or disassembling and reconfiguring them to highlight their not so subtle appeals to our unconscious desires.  From an industry that has long appeared obsessed with Freud’s ideas about obsession, come endless sublimations of the latent eroticism lurking underneath even the most benign purchase.  Lining the shelves of your local Duane Reade, the Dove shampoo bottle resonates an  “unknown” appeal. While the Dove logo lends respectability, once removed, the bare object now becomes slightly embarrassing, as its fetishistic nature assumes a higher profile. Cast in varied, bright colors and presented in the gallery’s storefront window on glass shelves, the Brancusi-esque formal properties of these quotidian objects reveal themselves; a “pure,” universal form which, when endlessly repeated via mass production, is intended to ensure brand loyalty.  Playing a central role in American mythology, the automobile is implicated in both dreams and nightmares; its actual purpose almost an afterthought. Suspended from the ceiling and dominating the main space of the gallery, Baskin’s life-size piece Jag transforms the overt sex appeal of a sports car into an ambiguous, embryonic shape, beckoning less with its brand identity than with its odd anthropomorphism. Adopting the pervasive surrealism found in advertising and combining it with the “tactile” stylization employed by product designers, Jag’s absence of utility refocuses our attention on the significance of consumer fantasy within the realm of the most functional of objects. Clad in leather usually associated with interiors, the vehicle is turned inside out, exposing a vulnerable skin (animal hide), which displaces the self-assured role of a sporty vehicle; its “primitive” aura belies psychological content usually sublimated by the norms of market exchange.  As we encounter these hybrids between sculptural objects, and products familiar to our everyday experience, their separation from their defining brand offers clues to the objects “true” function. Absent the commercial language, which would illustrate their intent, their underlying forms resonate with “messages” to the collective consumer unconscious. Stripped of their recognizable associations and repetitive branding tropes, David Baskin’s sculptures seem to exist in a not so comfortable area halfway between consumer appliances and aestheticized objects, free-floating former products which highlight our psychological investment in the endless landscape of consumer desire.   David Baskin received a BFA from The Cooper Union in 1987. One-person exhibitions include the Sculpture Center, NY, NY, Ingalls & Assoc., Miami, Fl and Black and White Gallery, Brooklyn, NY. Group exhibition include Galerie Erna Hecey, Brussels, Belgium, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY, Munson Williams Proctor Arts Institute, NY, Vox Populi, Philadelphia, PA, Elizabeth Harris Gallery, NY, NY among many others. David Baskin was one of the original members of the Brooklyn based non-profit arts organization Smack Mellon and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.   .   For those of you who have not seen Heartbreak Hotel, this group show has been extended beyond its published dates till Saturday, September 19th. Please stop by!   For more information, please visit the gallery’s website or contact  Nick Lawrence (Director/Owner), Kevin Kay (Managing Director) at 212-989-8700 or info@freightandvolume.com.   FREIGHT + VOLUME 542 West 24th Street New York, NY 10011 ph: 212.691.7700 fax: 212.989.8708 www.freightandvolume.com info@freightandvolume.com You are receiving this email because you opted in at our website Unsubscribe artsnews@absolutearts.com from this list. Our mailing address is: Freight + Volume 542 W24th St New York, NY 10011 Our telephone: 212.989.8700 Copyright (C) 2007 Freight + Volume All rights reserved. Forward this email to a friend

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