Carriage Trade

Mistaken Identity

peter scott — 2010-04-26T19:10:15Z

While the genre of portraiture tends to feature clearly defined subjects, the portrait show Mistaken Identity focuses instead on the uncertainties of facial recognition and how misperception might affect behavior in everyday experience. Linking the concept of belief to what we can “know” about an individual's face, the exhibition explores identification as a process influenced by the particular circumstances of any given encounter.

Commonly associated with detective stories and courtroom dramas, the need of proof of an individual's identity also has a utilitarian aspect, as our memories for faces plays a significant role in the most mundane of exchanges. In the somewhat rare case of people with prosopagnosia (face blindness), friends and family are indistinguishable from strangers, so that the “context” of an individual (hair, clothing, the sound of a voice) often provides the only clues to their identity. For an eyewitness or victim of a crime, these same associations can prove misleading, as they may falsely trigger a link to an innocent person who has chance connections to a perpetrator's appearance.

The case of imposters provides yet another example of a loss of identity through context, but here the subject willingly foregoes recognition in favor of subterfuge. When exposed, the temporary forfeiture of an identity is often met with a great deal of hostility. Those fooled by the deception are now faced with the uncertainty of their convictions. This need for authentication in connection with facial identification runs deep, as it underlines the survival mechanisms that guide our perceptions of whom and what we can trust.

Approaching portraiture as a means to explore the complex relationship between perception and circumstance, the work in the exhibition Mistaken Identity presents a range of possibilities concerning the construction of belief in the process of fixing an individual's identity.

The Innocence Project is affiliated with Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University

catalogue available
more on the artists

carriage trade benefit

peter scott — 2010-03-29T14:44:51Z

carriage trade is re-opening as a non-profit at 62 Walker Street (near Broadway) with a benefit to raise funds for its upcoming programming. The artwork can be previewed from 2-6 pm Wednesday, April 14 - Saturday, April 17, the day of the raffle event. Tickets for the raffle are $125 and can be purchased through paypal and in the gallery the week of the benefit. The number of tickets sold will equal the number of donated works. On the night of the raffle, ticket holders are entitled to choose an artwork once their numbers have been randomly drawn. The artworks will be presented anonymously, with the identity of the artist revealed only after the ticket holder acquires the piece.

Ricci Albenda
Graham Anderson
Michael Ashkin
David Baskin
Betty Beaumont
Martin Beck
Dike Blair
Barbara Bloom
Christina Cahill
Antoine Catala
Barbara Ess
Rochelle Feinstein
Liselot van de Heijden
Eric Heist
Ed Hemingway
Shirley Irons
Carol Irving
Paul Ramirez Jonas
Jennifer Karady
Tom Kotik
Tom Kovachevich
Ligorano/Reese

Pam Lins
John Miller
Filip Noterdaeme
R.H. Quaytman
Walter Robinson
Ron Rocheleau
Aura Rosenberg
Zoe Sheehan Saldana
David Schafer
Julia Scher
Trevor Shimizu
Heidi Schlatter
Ryan Schroeder
Dennis Sears
Mark Sengbusch
Mike Smith
Seton Smith
Colin Thomson
Julia Wachtel
Lindsay Walt
Oliver Wasow

Raffle Tickets are $125, every ticket purchase will guarantee one artwork and 2 complementary drink tickets.

carriage trade wishes to thank all the artists for generously donating their work, Dan Graham for his continued support of this project, board members Andrea Blum, Anya von Gosseln, and Ken Saylor, and benefit assistance from David Baskin and Carol Irving.

Market Forces

peter scott — 2009-02-03T00:08:21Z

Market Forces, Part 1/ Consuming Territories, and Market Forces, Part 2/Consumer Confidence, were first presented at carriage trade in New York in the winter and spring of 2008, and will be shown together at Galerie Erna Hecey in Brussels in May 2009. A short excerpt from the original press release appears below:

Market Forces addresses the euphoric consumer culture of the last decade that manifested itself in a seeming overflow of goods and services and an explosion of luxury housing development that now dominates the urban landscape. The term is derived from laissez-faire economic theory and refers to a hands-off approach to the ʻnatural orderʼ of supply and demand. Used in this context, it is meant to invoke skepticism concerning the almost religious belief in, and militant protection of, our god-given right to consume. This two-part exhibition is intended to be as inclusive as the market is pervasive, with work that addresses the influence of consumerism on personality, labor, politics, and the built environment.

First developed as a text in late 2007, the concept for Market Forces was, in part, a response to the overwhelming dominance of the neo-liberal economic model on social and cultural conditions in the U.S. and abroad. As the housing and consumer bubble grew to historic proportions, the American media repeatedly endorsed the notion of limitless economic expansion. Any doubts about the risks of bundling fraudulent housing loans and tossing them into the global financial stream for short term gains or to question the amount of debt consumers could hold were seen as ʻspoiling the partyʼ and were rarely expressed on primetime TV. Anchors on financial news shows functioned as cheerleaders for the boom, smugly nodding their heads up and down with every rise in housing prices or the Dow. Dozens of housing related reality shows appeared on cable TV with names like ʻFlip This Houseʼ, featuring opportunistic contractors who ʻspruced upʼ homes of marginal character and doubled the price for the next in line to cash in on skyrocketing prices before the music stopped.

Meanwhile, urban communities across the country were being uprooted by rampant speculation, as real estate developers offered lifelong residents piles of money to ʻcash outʼ, tearing down their houses and replacing them with ersatz modernist ʻluxuryʼ condos. Many who stayed took out risky but instantly lucrative mortgages, which lead to purchases of SUVʼs and whatever could be stuffed into them. Every year of the boom offered a new round of Christmas-time mayhem, as consumers fought for their right to shop. As shopping mall doors opened in the early morning hours of Black Friday, those shoppers unfortunate enough to stumble through first were occasionally trampled in the mad rush to be the first to get a deal on the newest Xbox.

The original presentation of Market Forces examined the decade long economic boom in what, in retrospect, appears to have been the moment of its peak. Linking the built environment and commodity culture, which too often had been seen as separate phenomena, these exhibitions focused on the social and psychological effects on a society enthralled with the consumerist ethos, a state of mind that is as short on memory as it is long on optimism. With constant media reports of a global economy stuck in reverse, the ʻpanic of 09ʼ threatens to displace the origins of a crisis which brought the ʻthreatʼ of nationalization to the U.S., where government intervention in business affairs was once considered heresy. Given the reluctance of societies in the midst of market euphoria to entertain skeptical views, perhaps this is now the moment to reflect on the social aspects of economic relations often overlooked during the decade-long boom.

more on the artists
Market Forces, Part 1 and 2 catalog
catalog essay

The Cult of Personality

peter scott — 2008-11-04T04:03:05Z

Erna Hecey Gallery is very pleased to present the exhibition The Cult of Peronality, Portraits and Mass Culture.

As the U.S presidential campaign kicks into high gear, the exhibition The Cult of Personality, Portraits and Mass Culture investigates the relationship between celebrity and political personas within the context of mass media. In focusing on portraiture, a genre which privileges the relative psychological interest of its subject, this exhibition attempts to locate the manner in which the development of an identity for mass consumption adopts the traditional viewer/subject relationship, with the result that the viewer tends to ‘lose themselves' in the protectiveness or superiority of the featured personality.

Democratic societies, presumed to be free from totalitarian-style cults of personality, often employ persuasion, seduction, and manipulation as part of a phenomenon known as ‘soft power', a seemingly benign means of governmental influence on mass media whereby a citizen's position is more or less co-opted through overwhelming saturation of ‘preferred' information. The influence on mass sentiment by public relations firms, lobbyists and the frequently used anonymous sources within the news, when taken as a whole, is usually dismissed as conspiratorial. But when considered in practical terms (success or failure), the effectiveness of a democratic government's use of mass media to convince the public, for example, that it is in their best interest to go to war, recent history has proven these methods to be extremely reliable.

Depending on whether the goal is to make the subject appear ‘familiar' or ‘in charge', remnants of various types of portraiture, from the snapshot to the honorific, are usually visible in the fabricated image of a politician or celebrity. While maintaining a significant relationship to the genre of portraiture, the artwork and archival material in The Cult of Personality, Portraits and Mass Culture, represents a broad range of responses to the creation of identity cults via mass media, offering critical and sometimes ironic commentary on the construction, dissemination, and consumption of larger than life figures within the public arena.

Market Forces

peter scott — 2008-05-18T18:29:40Z

"In the next months domestic political issues will be:
a. As contentious as ever
b. About the same with politicians still arguing
c. Best ignored — as I do today"
question from ConsumerConfidenceSurvey.com

The consumer confidence index serves as a barometer of the nation's collective (consumer) psyche, a monthly taking of the pulse that sheds light on the current mood and purchasing power of the American consumer. Responsible for roughly 75% of the economy, maintaining a regular consumption of goods and services among the public is critical to sustaining economic growth. While the index has the aura of scientific measurement, the thing being measured is inherently psychological, more dependent on “sentiment” (a term for a similar index) than hard fact. In the aftermath of 9/11, genuine concern broke out within the business community about the possibility of a traumatized public that would lose focus and, out of fear or a sense of doubt, fail to return to the nation's malls and stores. Politicians (Rudy Giuliani) and media figures (Gossip columnist Liz Smith) urged and occasionally chided a stunned public to do their “patriotic duty” and report to the checkout line forthwith.

The most significant annual right of consumer activity is the day that has come to be known as Black Friday. Revving the economic engine full tilt, this first Friday after Thanksgiving lays bare the competitive and sometimes brutal realities of “getting the best deal”. Featuring the consumer version of the mosh pit, the crowds crashing the gates on Black Friday often show no mercy, with at least one or two unfortunate souls being stampeded in their innocent attempt to acquire the newest technological gadget at a once in a lifetime discount. Along with the need to “be the first” exists an almost survivalist mentality that pits one consumer against another, in a race to avoid losing out by failing to obtain the coveted item. Underneath it all is the monumental pressure of the media's version of “the Holidays”, which tests the consumer's devotion to God and Family in a month long orgy of product-laden sentiment.

While Black Friday represents the pinnacle of consumer culture, one's “buying power” is at the core of their everyday identity as a consumer. With the increasing sophistication of demographic research and applications, consumers may seamlessly match themselves with brands readymade for their particular lifestyle. No longer objects that are lifted from the shelves and purchased according to need, products now carry with them far reaching associations, that, when assembled with their appropriate counterparts, emerge into a full fledged belief system that often trumps politics in its significance to daily life. In this second part of Market Forces, the exhibition's focus will be on the underlying psychology of consumerism and its objects, with work that presents an often skeptical and ironic detachment with respect to one of America's most favorite and absorbing pastimes.

more on the artists
Market Forces catalog
catalog essay

Market Forces

peter scott — 2008-03-31T17:01:05Z

“We never know where the consumer is going to be at any point in time, so we have to find a way to be everywhere. Ubiquity is the new exclusivity.”

Linda Kaplan Thaler, Kaplan Thaler Group, New York ad agency

Market Forces addresses the euphoric consumer culture of the last decade that manifested itself in a seeming overflow of goods and services and an explosion of luxury housing development that now dominates the urban landscape. The term is derived from laissez-faire economic theory and refers to a hands-off approach to the "natural order" of supply and demand. Used in this context, it is meant to invoke skepticism concerning the almost religious belief in, and militant protection of, our god-given right to consume. This two-part exhibition is intended to be as inclusive as the market is pervasive, with work that addresses the influence of consumerism on personality, labor, politics, and the built environment. Market Forces / Part 1: Consuming Territories will examine the profound effects of unregulated markets on the built environment and the psychology of the individual through their relentless quest to consume ever more territory and "claim" space.

As cities throughout the country "renovate", urban settings begin to look like giant department stores in the midst of changing displays. One familiar structure after another is altered or "disappeared", replaced in many cases by tall, unremarkable steel and glass luxury lofts. Real estate hysteria induces a frenzied atmosphere as neighborhoods and communities become raw material for a make-over that promotes lifestyle culture, a perpetual celebration of leisure devoid of any meaningful connection to place. This displacement of locality parallels larger shifts in the global economy, where capital flows in and out of cities and countries with no connection to the particularities of social or cultural conditions. In the absence of a meaningful connection to place, brands become necessary to (often falsely) identify the product (building) as having roots in the "artsy" neighborhood within which it has "positioned" itself.

While the complex yet freewheeling financial system that brought us sub-prime loans begins to falter, and an atmosphere of wild speculation gives way to concern and misgivings, some parts of the country are suffering the negative results of the excessive risk at the heart of the housing boom. As tent cities crop up in southern California and whole blocks of homes are boarded up in Ohio, the cause-and-effect relationship of the built environment to a free market system deserves some attention, in particular at a moment when it's anybody's guess as to what the current conditions will lead to.

Much of the artwork in Market Forces / Part 1 reflects on the rapidly changing conditions an individual encounters in everyday experience, conveying a sense of place that is constantly in flux. Ranging in scale from an installation to an ipod video, and in technique from a hand made tapestry to photography, the work in this exhibition addresses the currently unpredictable nature of the physical spaces around us, which, largely due to their shifting values in the global marketplace, seem to be in perpetual transition.

The Cult of Personality

peter scott — 2008-01-12T16:31:51Z

“Someone said that Brecht wanted everybody to think alike. I want everybody to think alike. But Brecht wanted to do it through Communism, in a way. Russia is doing it under government. It's happening here all by itself without being under a strict government; so if it's working without trying, why can't it work without being Communist? Everybody looks alike and acts alike, and we're getting more and more that way.”

Andy Warhol

Unlike the crude forms of thought control and idolatry found in Stalinist Russia and present day North Korea, the American media's presentation of its leaders is predicated on the notion of a free press and an open exchange of ideas. In practice, the ideal of the public airwaves is currently suffering under the weight of media consolidation by a few corporate entities whose agendas are often expressed by omission rather than outright suppression (witness the exclusion of certain candidates from recent network sponsored debates). The dilemma for those (government or private interests) who wish to influence public opinion within democracies is that, unlike totalitarian systems, they do not have the option of force.

Persuasion, seduction, and manipulation are often employed as part of a phenomenon known as “soft power”, a seemingly benign means of governmental influence on mass media whereby a democratic citizen's position is more or less co-opted through overwhelming saturation of “preferred” information. The influence on mass sentiment by public relations firms, lobbyists and the frequently used “anonymous” sources within the news, when taken as a whole, is often dismissed as conspiratorial. But when considered in practical terms (success or failure), the effectiveness of a democratic government's use of mass media to convince the public, for example, that it is in their best interest to go to war, recent history has proven these methods to be extremely reliable.

Any plausible narrative requires characters, and the role that personality plays in developing the story line is significant. The process of crafting present-day myths to be served up for the purpose of turning the news into entertainment requires some belief in charismatic personalities. While the concept of a “cult of personality” is most often associated with autocratic leaders who use mass media to develop and sustain their “popularity” in an undemocratic state, the sphere of influence enjoyed by the media within a democratic system, and recent cases of its manipulation by government, suggest that this concept is ready for an expanded definition.

In adopting the genre of portraiture, a form associated with traditional identity construction which focuses on the relative psychological interest of the subject, “The Cult of Personality/Portraits and Mass Culture” attempts to locate the manner in which the development of an identity for mass consumption adopts the traditional viewer/subject relationship, often with the expectation that viewer will “lose themselves” in the protectiveness or superiority of the subject while finding momentary fulfillment in a distraction from what they are meant to feel that they lack. Depending on whether the goal is to make the subject appear “familiar” or “in charge”, remnants of various types of portraiture, from the snapshot to the honorific, are often visible in the fabricated image of a politician or celebrity. The seductive chemistry of personality cults also relies heavily on an element of a “suspension of disbelief” characteristic of all good theatre. The audience both wills these heroes into being, and is carried away by their stage-managed charisma.

In the run up to an election which is mercifully overshadowing our current leader's long, slow decline in popularity, the mechanisms through which personality can trump reason in the public sphere might be worth revisiting, if only as a reminder of the very real consequences of allowing fictions to displace facts.

Out of Place

peter scott — 2005-04-16T03:56:00Z

Engaged in regular pursuits of work and entertainment in the highly stimulating environment of today's city, our response to the urban landscape is generally one of developing habits and routines. Often lost underneath the traces of our paths, which become well worn with repeated use, is an awareness of the physical spaces whose function is of little relevance to our immediate needs or whose function of which remains unknown. In the ever-expanding cityscape, which perpetually yields to the maxim “grow or die”, the urban dweller must adapt to constant change while attempting to maintain a psychological sense of order and control. For Walter Benjamin, who wrote eloquently about the rapid changes taking place in turn-of-the century Berlin, the modern city consisted of an environment so complex that its buildings were experienced not as autonomous objects but in what he referred to as a “state-of-distraction”, fleeting structures that reveal themselves in a series of glances as one moves about the urban terrain.

This movement, though considered “free” in a liberal democracy, takes place in a setting where all space is, in a sense, “spoken for”. Moving continually in and out of properties that are either public or private in the course of a day, a pedestrian in Manhattan in particular crosses and re-crosses a chaotic set of boundaries whose sometimes arbitrary nature is afforded the impression of order through the city's horizontal and vertical grids. Internalizing this sense of order through regular compliance with instructions and warnings encourages an experience of urban space that, while functional, fails to take into account the ‘meaning' of this order, or even whether it serves the purposes that it is implicitly designed for.

In an effort to address the potential conflict between the complex hierarchies of behavioral codes that exist in a “functional” modern metropolis, and the contradictory, pleasure seeking impulses of human instinct that seek the improvisational over the planned, Henri LeFevbre, writing in the 1960's at particularly tumultuous time in Paris, and more recently Michel DeCerteau in his book “The Practice of Everyday Life” have referred to the significance of the quotidian or ‘everyday' experience of contemporary life as a means to escape the limits of a purely directional and goal-oriented experience in an ever more controlled urban environment. LeFevbre, witnessing a later phase of urban transformation than what Walter Benjamin had experienced in Berlin, was interested in the effects that an increasingly sophisticated technological society was having on city dwellers who experienced the gradual displacement of the “historical city”, which to that point had lent cohesiveness to urban life. Recognizing that modern technologies were replacing the former social order with a more abstract bureaucracy that allowed for greater control of the individual, both Lefevbre and DeCerteau saw in the emphasis of the “everyday” or “ordinary” experiences a liberating potential that eluded the often harsh and alienating functionality of modern urban experience.

In an effort to examine the overlooked manifestations of what is often considered common, routine or “everyday”, the exhibition “Out of Place” brings together artists who, through various means make reference to the familiar, but through altering the scale, context or expected framing of their subjects, reveal aspects of experience that question our assumptions about them. Taking into account the site of the UBS Gallery where the exhibition takes place, some of the work will specifically address the architecture and physical spaces of midtown Manhattan, offering an experience of place that visitors might come to recognize as having been “hidden in plain sight”.

POP Patriotism

peter scott — 2002-09-13T22:34:00Z

Offering artifacts of popular culture placed alongside the work of artists skeptical of America's renewed devotion to its flag, the exhibition POP Patriotism addresses the implications of this recent trend. The explosion of patriotic fervor that first swept across the country last fall and winter, seemingly justified by the trauma caused by what occurred in September, has a less than wholesome side that appears to have little to do with a simple pride in one's nationality. Focusing on the mass marketing ofnational sentiment and nostalgia engaged in by the media, fashion and entertainment industries, the artwork included in POP Patriotism reflects a skepticism towards the propagandistic and commercial opportunism that has been so prevalent in the past several months. This patriotic revivalism, having initially provided a rallying point for explosive emotions like defiance or revenge, also tapped into the urge to belong to something bigger than one's own concerns. Perhaps alienated by a regular diet of overnight successes celebrated in the media at the close of the 90's, the public's impulse to identify with issues other than the rise and fall of dotcoms was deftly exploited by anyone looking for the "next big thing". Exhibiting mass-produced patriotic objects within the context of artworks that confront the underlying anxieties of this moment, the goal of POP Patriotism, in part, is to raise questions about the political and mercantile efforts to manipulate and cajole a tense and uncertain public.

As the novelty of American flags overwhelming the landscape subsides, the iconography of patriotism has settled into the nooks and crannies of the country's unconscious, functioning like worry beads that are massaged without thought; a comforting ritual collectively engaged in. POP Patriotism intends to focus on this ritual, offering an ironic perspective on a recent cultural phenomenon that has yet to be fully examined.

NOBODIES HOME

peter scott — 1999-04-16T18:08:00Z

Nobodies Home is a group exhibition concerned with living space and alienation. The exhibition takes its cue from the current celebration of "lifestyle culture" so prevalent in today's news and entertainment media, where an endless parade of magazine and television spots seems to reduce the image of life to one of Martha Stewart's hypnotic discourses on domesticity.

With television news offering tips on which supermarkets to avoid, and newspapers offering lengthy articles on how to find the right contractor for your Upper West Side renovation, the only significant problems these days seem to revolve around consumption and decoration.

The artworks and texts for this exhibition have been chosen for their relevance to the alienation produced by an ever-expanding corporate capitalism that, in its tireless creation of new markets, is leaving an increasingly homogenized culture in its wake. Recognizing that this process is not taking place in a vacuum, the scope of the exhibition is intended to be broad enough to include reflections on shifts in economic and political agendas necessary to pave the way for the further progress of The Society of the Spectacle which, thirty years after Guy Debord first described the phenomenon, continues with what appears to be a renewed vengeance.

For the most part reduced to playing the important but obsequious role of cheerleader to these events, the major media, dependent on advertising revenue which in turn requires the allegiance of consumers, has become extremely adept at stimulating the public's fears and desires in a largely successful bid to distract it from any doubts that might develop during infrequent moments of quiet reflection. Nobodies Home might be seen, in part, as an effort to entertain these doubts and expand upon them.

The artists chosen for this exhibition are not necessarily chosen because their work subscribes to its premise but on the basis of specific pieces that might, when seen in the overall context of the show, loosely describe the alienating effects these conditions might have on our cultural experience of a home.