Keep track of this jumble, it’s important to know how it all works out. Rich people look like candy, but their facials aren’t cheap. Today’s headache predicates another night of heavy drinking. Tylenol® should help with that.
A trip to the mall is a trip to the liquor store; a throwaway experience. Marbled interiors and glossy surfaces are the best places to find silk socks or finely aged whiskey. It’s the finest on display until it’s usurped in the fall; hangovers always remain in season.
Confidence is a convertible sprayed by a sprinkler with red lipstick smeared on the rich leather seats. Ruined bed sheets and carpet stains only add to this unfolding Jack Pollock of salty virility. White always can use a good dose of pigment, anyway, and the credit card will always cover the mess.
Between the Ativan in the medicine cabinet and the oxfords in the closet, an unfolding narrative emerges. A triumph of disposable income is hanging on the living room wall. Those rich, deep hues are a damn good thing to look at while getting in her pants.
There is no need to explain when the television is on and Marcello has the whip, Asa nisi masa. It’s classic, all in black and white with a touch of grey. Before you: voyages between meeting rooms, cocktail lounges and blackout moments between two legs.
It’s the best a man can get.
Anat Ebgi is pleased to present A Guide to Benefits, the first Los Angeles solo show of New York-based artist Martin Basher. Expanding upon the lineage of display-based artistic practices, Basher’s work taps consumer psychology, sublimated desire and masculine gaze. The title of the exhibition refers to credit card protections, customer loyalty programs and the masochistic intimacy of encounters between associates, clients, friends and partners.
For his solo exhibition, Basher will present a series of paintings and collages featuring his signature motif of flawless oil-painted gradated stripes, along with a site specific sculpture made from plexiglass, aluminum, chrome and everyday consumer goods. Marking a new development in the work, A Guide to Benefits brings photo-real renderings of legs and liquor glasses into the paintings and collages, making an explicit link between the paintings and the retail forms that constitute his sculpture. The objects and images resonate with the emotional undercurrents of consumerism. The consumer’s appetite is insatiable; customer loyalty is only as good as its dopamine kick. In this context, Basher’s work wryly locates the sublime on the shop floor and gallery wall in equal measure.
Martin Basher was born in 1979 in Wellington, New Zealand and lives and works in New York. The artist received his MFA at Columbia University. He has shown internationally at public institutions including University of Connecticut, Art In General, Auckland Art Gallery, and The Public Art Fund. Recent solo exhibitions include Starkwhite, Auckland and Saatchi & Saatchi, New York. Basher has been included in group shows at 179 Canal, Tracy Williams, New York and Brand New Gallery, Milan. Basher has an upcoming solo exhibition this fall with Brand New Gallery, Milan.
