Outsource Show, Installation View.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve caught a number of articles about the business relationship between the U.S. and China. Curator Alexander Tarrant decided to look at U.S.-China economics on a micro-art level in considering the idea of outsourcing American art production to China. The result was the Outsource Show, which is on view at Werkartz/Arts District (927 S Santa Fe) through March 23, for which Tarrant asked 17 creatives who don’t paint to come up with ideas for paintings, which would then be outsourced to Dafen Village, a place in China’s Shenzhen province where knock-offs of great master oil paintings are produced.
What makes this show more than just a simple performance between U.S. and China micro-art economies are the back-and-forth exchanges that the artists have with a man named Zhang, who painted all the pieces in his Dafen Village studio. In this show, there’s a lot gleaned about cultural differences in terms of individualism vs. the worker, the nature of art production in the U.S., and what realistic painting looks like, bringing to light some surprising conversations.
Read more at http://www.craveonline.com/art/967647-exhibit-not-outsource-art-ideas-china#me4JQIlXTVSSBdzk.99
