Thierry Goldberg Projects is pleased to present Bare Market, a group show with work by Lisa DiLillo, Swetlana Heger, Barbara Ess, and Julika Rudelius.

As anxiety mounts with endless media forecasts of recession, there is little relief from impending loss. Not knowing where to turn or how to cope with the change of tide, the public is caught between the government’s encouragement to spend and the media’s suggestions to save—a paralyzing bipolar situation. With Bare Market, Thierry Goldberg Projects takes on the menacing bear market through a selection of work which challenges notions of the global economy, money, and status.

Crickets star in Lisa DiLillo’s two-channel video installation Realtime / Currency Exchange. She pits nature against capital in strikingly absurd juxtaposition. In the left channel, a cricket is trapped within a clock surrounded by dewy silk flowers placed in memoriam. Fighting the hands of time, the cricket scurries across an ideal sunset (the face of the clock) – a destination he will never reach. In the right channel, perhaps referring to the declining value of the dollar, two crickets dig into two one hundred dollar bills. DiLillo’s fierce literalism depicts consumerism and deflation simultaneously in visual pun.

Swetlana Heger’s text installation NIKKEI is anonymous as it is ambiguous. Cast in stainless steel the letters may have been pried off the Japanese stock market’s wall and hung in the gallery. Typical of her performance art collaborations with global luxury brands, NIKKEI stands without comment at the intersection of commerce and art. Just like the stocks in the market it represents, NIKKEI can be bought and sold as work of art with an ever fluctuating value.

Using a pinhole camera, Barbara Ess depicts imagery, however carefully composed, with the seeming lightness of a dream. In No Title (Stocks), Ess captures a crumpled page from the daily newspaper, where a human skull seems to be hovering above the stock market report. Delicate and evocative, the blurred exposure is ghostlike. The pinhole camera effect provides a dramatic depth of mood, picturing a solitary psychological focus. The market watch page is both stock report and obituary unto itself.

In Julika Rudelius’ two-channel video Economic Primacy, an all male cast of Dutch CEOs share their thoughts about power, money, and success. Interviewed using a hidden earpiece, they respond to Rudelius’ questions over the phone while she is situated in another room. Set in a generic office space of Rudelius’ own construction, the intensity of focus and sense of observation are penetrating. The blankness of the office tells of a certain lofty separation, perhaps out of touch, from the rest of society. With this framing in double-screen, she heightens the candid nature of the conversations. Views on the role and importance of money as the ultimate measure of love, image, and success follow with snide quips on class and race.

Julika Rudelius was born in Cologne, Germany and currently lives and works in New York. Her work has been widely exhibited in the U.S. and abroad, most recently in a solo show at the Swiss Institute, New York and in Global Feminism at The Brooklyn Museum. She also exhibited at The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; The Gwangju Biennale, Korea; Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt; and at Tate Modern, London.

Barbara Ess was born in Brooklyn and currently lives and works in New York. Her work has been exhibited in numerous museums, art centers, and gallery exhibitions. Her photographs are in several museum collections such as The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.; the Musee National d’Art Moderne Centre Pompiou, Paris; The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles; The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.

Swetlana Heger was born in the Czech Republic and currently lives and works in Berlin. Her work has been exhibited at KW, Berlin; MASS MOCA, North Adams; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Museum fur Angewandte Kunst (MAK), Vienna; The BASS Museum of Art, Miami; The Phoenix Art Museum; Musée des Beaux Arts, Nancy; La Salle de Bains, Lyon; Haus am Waldsee, Berlin; and Artists’ Space in New York. Later this year she will exhibit at The Kalmar Konstmuseum in Sweden, and at The Musee des Beaux-Arts, Dole, France.

Lisa DiLillo’s work has been exhibited internationally in such venues as the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp; the Reina Sofia National Musuem of Art, Madrid; White Box, New York; and Momenta Art, Brooklyn. She has been awarded an Electronic Arts Grant, a Jerome Foundation Grant, and residencies at The Experimental Television Center.