For Sale/TVs From Craigslist

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TVs From Craigslist, are images of the screens of TVs for sale I found on Craigslist. With hints of the seller’s interior space reflected in them, they offer inadvertent glimpses of intimacy and function as self-portraits of the sellers (the camera’s flash announcing the seller’s presence in the image). These unconsidered images almost seem like pleas for attention. If you look closely you can find, hidden in them, little gestures of private exposure to the great anonymous "out there". I isolate the site of these gestures to expose the promise, and ultimate absence, of intimacy that the internet fosters.

I download the images, crop all but the screen, enlarge each to scale and print an edition of 2 of each (the prints range in size from 8"x10" to 16"x20"). During an exhibition, I upload the images to Craigslist (http://www.craigslist.org) in the city the exhibition is taking place and list them under the heading "TVs for sale". There, the first edition of each of the prints is available for purchase for the price of the original TV (ranging anywhere from $10-$300). The second edition becomes available for purchase at gallery prices after the Craigslist edition is sold.

As a kind of public art TVs From Craigslist utilizes the public domain both for its content and its context. On Craisglist, the work is a collaboration between the artist and the gallery, addressing issues of exchange: how differently a piece works on the internet than it does in real time/space, and what happens to the perceived value of a work, and its meaning, when it is transcribed from web-based media to print-based media, and visa-versa. There the juxtaposition of the art market with a consumer market engages an unsuspecting consumer public and asks it to consider the value of an art object (made from its own visual vocabulary) to be as worthy of their attention as the consumer object they hope to acquire.