The Future of Online Advertising, a group exhibition featuring the work of Ben Coonley, Jason Corace, Charles Gute, Brian Kennon, Elke Lehmann, Jessica Slaven, Maya Schindler, and Sheila Wilson appropriates a familiar turn of phrase in the same way the participating artists in this show draw upon pre-existing cultural material. Taken from the similarly named annual New York online advertising conference, the title means to broadly describe a utopic form of advertising; which is to say, in the future, all advertising is art. It is aesthetically challenging and engaging, it is inventive and it is smart.
Providing a great initial model for discussion coon simply replaces online advertising with ads he likes better. Choosing the New York subway ad celebrity Dr. Zizmor, Coonley's animated gifs build Zizmor's web presence on his behalf. Sheilah Wilson also prefers to replace ads with other ads, drawing upon the Internet's version of carving "for a good time call" in a tree, bench or bathroom stall. Using the anonymous commentors on Craigslist's Missed Connections, a website where people try to locate people with whom they've shared desire, Wilson photographs plaques with selected appropriated text. "Last name, I believe it to be Sparks," reads one particularly amusing pun, no doubt selected as a line that might double as advertising for a car parts.
Reflecting on the form of the ad itself, Charles Gute's 17 Standards (After Bochner), references Mel Bochner's Standard series in which the artist used black tape and butcher's paper to measure its own dimensions on a wall. Similarly minimal, Gute's pixels serve more or less the same purpose; the re-iteration and articulation of form describing the most essential quality of the ad. By contrast, Jessica Slaven's quotation of well known literature is less an homage to these thinkers than a practice of subtle alteration to their work. Flawlessly photoshopping the titles of well known books, artist Martin Kippenberger's No Drawing, No Cry, humorously becomes No Drawing, No Cry, No Tear, while Susan Faludi's Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women becomes lashback: The Undeclared War Against American Women.
Also working with literature, Jason Corace, uses the Modern Library's ten greatest English Language Novels list as the basis of his work. Compressing the text from each book and animating those images together in a 1 second loop, the result resembles a typographic permutation of television snow. And yet, while beautiful and imbued with meaning the piece doesn't change the functionality of space; the context and format of ads almost inevitably reduces some of the most important knowledge in the world to visual noise. Corace has titled his piece after all the books in his exhibition, 
ulyssesthegreatgatsbyaportraitoftheartistasayoungmanlolitabravenewworldthesound
andthefurysonsandloversthegrapesofwraththewayofallfleshmobydick.
While government representatives may not represent such perfected knowledge Elke Lehmann's Flag series, describes American identity using the flag as a garment. Appropriately timed for the United States elections, Lehmann places the red white and blue motif -- frequently unwoven or torn and against exposed skin -- revealing an erotic undertone to American nationalism. Similarly political, Maya Schindler's text based images speak to the message of Change presidential-elect Barack Obama built his campaign around, while Brian Kennon's Monster Love refers to the 1968 presidential election year in which Democratic candidate John F. Kennedy was assassinated along with Martin Luther King Jr.. Bringing together images of fucking pigs, Alice Cooper, a shock rocker known for his use of the Ouija board, and a bare breasted woman with her dog, Kennon's exhibition proposes a future cultural reaction to political changed based on the carnage of 1968. It was after all, only four years after an election that until this one just past, drew the largest number of voters in American history.
Curated by: Paddy Johnson
THE IMAGES
See all the images from The Future of Online Advertising
This is our first show where the artists' utilized animation. Unfortunately, the animation doesn't appear in the link above (we're working on this), but it is available through the plugin.
Note: there are two "Not Safe For Work" (NSFW) images in this show. These images are not included in the general release you would receive automatically. These will be in a upcoming Add-Art "Unrated" version as soon as possible.
ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES
Ben Coonley, from Boston, lives in Brooklyn) makes videos, performances, and electronic media projects. His work has been exhibited at the New York Underground Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, 2nd Moscow Biennial, Sundance Film Festival New Frontier Program, Pacific Film Archive and other venues.
Jason Corace is a media artist and educator living in NYC. He works in a collaborative studio called DoubleTriple, and teaches New Media at the Parsons School of Design and NYU. He has a background in data visualization and game design.
Jason Corace is a media artist and educator living in NYC. He works in a collaborative studio called DoubleTriple, and teaches New Media at the Parsons School of Design and NYU. He has a background in data visualization and game design.
After studying and working as a classical musician for many years, Charles Gute eventually left music to pursue fine art, though his musical training still informs much of his visual practice. Gute has participated in countless exhibitions and residencies. Amongst the most recent, In spring of 2005 he was a visiting artist-in-residence at the Art Department of the University of Nevada in Las Vegas. Also in 2005 he received a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Fellowship and attended a Jentel Foundation residency in Wyoming, where he worked on B-58, a land art project still in progress. In fall of 2006 a solo exhibition of recent work was presented at Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco. In spring of 2007 his work was included in "Conceptualism" at Jason Rulnick Gallery in New York, which will be followed by a solo exhibition in fall of 2008


Elke Lehmann produces site-specific installations and public interventions that address the physical and historical aspects of the spaces in which they are sited. Often, she extracts details from the site or extends and/or projects parts, magnifying their potential for suggesting meaning. Many of her works have focused on the amplification of history and collective memory. Over the past decade, Lehmann has exhibited at various institutions and public sites throughout Europe and the United States. She most recently received a Rema Hort Mann Foundation Art Grant and participated in the National Studio Program at the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center and the New Views: World Financial Center Residency. Her work has been featured in various periodicals, including Art in America, The Village Voice and The New York Times. Elke Lehmann was born in 1966 in Trier, Germany. She lives and works in New York.
Brian Kennon's lives and works in Los Angeles. He the founder and publisher of 2nd Cannons Publications and is represented by Mesler & Hug, Los Angeles.
Maya Schindler earned her MFA at the Yale University School of Art and her BFA at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem. She is the recipient of fellowships/residencies from the Berlin Art Foundation, the Israel Museum and the Jerusalem Print Shop.
Jessica Slaven is an artist working in New York City. She is a graduate of The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, and Skowhegan and has shown at David Krut Projects, Alana Kagan Gallery, and Brooklyn Fireproof in New York. She also writes for Paper Monument, among other periodicals.
Sheilah Wilson was born in 1975 in Caribou River, Nova Scotia. Wilson completed her BA at Mount Allison University in English/French (1999), BFA in Photography at NSCAD University (2002) and MA Fine Arts at Goldsmiths College (2004). Wilson has exhibited her work in Canada, the USA, England and Israel. Wilson was the recipient of a Creative Capital Foundation scholarship in 2006. Wilson's recent work has been commissioned for the Museum of Fine Arts of Santa Fe and upcoming shows are taking place at Judy Chicago's Through the Flower Foundation.
