Winkleman / Plus Ultra Gallery Hosts “Would You Rather Be a Loser or a Pig??

Wednesday, 06 September 2006 06:29

New York City - Winkleman / Plus Ultra Gallery is really quite pleased indeed to present “Would You Rather Be a Loser or a Pig?” our third solo exhibition by New York artist Jennifer Dalton.  Known for large-scale installations, often with quasi-scientific or corporate motifs, Dalton develops incisive visual systems that facilitate instantaneous, concise conclusions from otherwise overwhelming amounts of data.  For this exhibition, she presents a series of works focused on the reality behind what it means to be a contemporary artist working today.

For “How Do Artists Live?” (2006, projected slide show), Dalton conducted an extensive, Internet-based survey of more than 850 anonymous artists in Fall 2005.  Her presentation of the results examines the lifestyles and economic situation of working artists and finds some surprising answers to the title question, including that 20% of artists with incomes over $200K / year do not have health insurance; women artists are twice as likely as men artists to be primarily supported by their partner; and men artists are more than twice as likely as women artists to primarily support themselves with art sales.

Highly praised in multiple art publications after its debut at New York’s Pulse Art Fair in March 2006 “The Collector-ibles” (2006, mixed media installation, edition of 3) features five large glass-fronted cabinets with 200 figurines representing the “Top 200 Art Collectors,” as catalogued in ArtNews magazine's 2005 list.  Each figure is a gilded Marvel or DC superhero mounted on a handmade base.  The type of figurine and the treatment of the base denotes where the collector's money comes from including business; finance; the arts & media; science & computers; real estate; law; energy (oil or mining industries, etc); and inheritance.  In addition, each figure is holding different colored miniature shopping bags, color coded and also labeled in tiny printing to represent the type of art the collector collects.