[Nettime-bold] Announcing AfterWalkerEvans.com and AfterSherrieLevine.co

http://AfterWalkerEvans.com
http://AfterSherrieLevine.com
Michael Mandiberg

"Paula Cooper Gallery"
32 N Moore, 6th Floor
May 18 - June 13 by appt.
Reception Friday, May 18 (6-9pm)

In 1936, Walker Evans photographed the Burroughs, a family of sharecroppers in Depression era Alabama. In 1979, Sherrie Levine rephotographed Walker Evans' photographs from the monograph "First and Last." In 2001, Michael Mandiberg scanned these same photographs, publishing them on the Web sites AfterWalkerEvans.com and AfterSherrieLevine.com - virtual galleries designed to facilitate the dissemination of these images as part of a commentary on how we arrive at information in this burgeoning digital age.

On AfterWalkerEvans.com you will find a browsable selection of these images, links to the high-resolution exhibition-quality images available for download and print-out, along with a certificate of authenticity for each image (that you print out and sign yourself) and, finally, directions on how to frame the image so that it will fulfill the requirements of the certificate.

By making the image's URL its title - with titles such as "Untitled (AfterWalkerEvans.com/1.jpg)" - the images can be easily located and downloaded by anyone. By distributing the images online with certificates of authenticity, the images can be owned by anyone. Unlike the work of the late Felix Gonzalez-Torres - known for his spills of candy and stacks of paper from which the viewer can take a piece - Mandiberg's certificates are used to insure that each satellite image be considered equally authentic. In the work of Gonzalez-Torres the sole certificate of authenticity, and thus, the right to reproduce the work, is sold like a traditional art object. Mandiberg's work assumes an explicit strategy to create a physical object with cultural value, but little or no economic value.

Michael Mandiberg is a conceptual artist who uses the net to explore issues surrounding commerce, labor, and language. His ongoing project Shop Mandiberg is a fully functional e-commerce web site that markets and sells every last one of his personal possessions. Shop Mandiberg (http://www.Mandiberg.com) has received 80,000 hits, and sold over 60 of his possessions to date. His work has been written about by the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, The Berliner Zeitung, Artbyte.com, Eyestorm.com, among others. His work is currently included in Net.Ephemera, curated by Mark Tribe at the Moving Image Gallery in New York.

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For more information please contact: info@AfterSherrieLevine.com, or 917-584-2177

Please click the following link for a print ready version of this press release:
http:/www.AfterWalkerEvans.com/AfterWalkerEvans_PressRel.doc