A Life Of Consumption – Rachel Perry Welty I Love You
Posted: May 7th, 2012 | Author: artintolife | Filed under: art | Tags: art, art exhibitions, artists, humor, mass market, popular culture, shoppingGotta love it when all of your favorite things come together in one place. At the Proof of Purchase show on Saturday I was carefully examining every postcard to find one by Rachel Perry Welty, an unbelievable contemporary artist with whom I am absolutely obsessed, and scoring that for $50 would have been a major coup. Sadly, we learned that her postcard had already sold, and that Rachel herself had in fact purchased one of the most coveted items in the show, a postcard by artist John Baldessari, and from there the conversation drifted to Perry Welty’s spread in the December issue of Vogue magazine. I had seen the spread at the time but somehow had forgotten about it (which doesn’t make much sense to me given how much I love Perry Welty’s work, but there you have it, yet more evidence of my early onset Alzheimer’s, and led to the mind-boggling realization that I had just thrown that magazine into the recycling the week before). Now I cannot stop thinking about that spread (and what an a*hole move it was that I managed to throw it away).
Rachel Perry Welty Vogue spread – December 2011
Rachel Perry Welty + Vogue magazine + fashion + outrageous floral prints = it’s like they knew I was coming. It makes me warm and happy all over.
Perry Welty has done a number of things so far in her career, but perhaps what endears her to me most is the mastery with which she turns the most banal of everyday objects into art. The first piece I ever saw of hers was a tiny shelf my in-laws bought upon which were lined up miniature reproductions of the boxes of some basic grocery items (Triscuits, Cheerios, Stoneground Wheat Crackers).
She has since done a site specific installation for Johnson & Johnson using the boxes from their products …
RACHEL PERRY WELTY site-specific permanent installation at Johnson&Johnson, NYC laserprints and adhesive 108 x 216 x 2 inches via artstuff on flickr
and used materials such as those stickers you find on your fruit …
RACHEL PERRY WELTY fruit sticker drawing fruit stickers, archival tape on paper 21.5 x 21.5 inches via artstuff on flickr
twist ties …
RACHEL PERRY WELTY Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, 2006 (detail) "Wall" silver twist ties via artstuff on flickr
price stickers …
RACHEL PERRY WELTY detail from Wallpaper (2004) and bu$ (2007) - wallpaper and vinyl bus wrap made from original collage of price stickers on cardboard box dimensions variable - via artstuff on flickr
and the list goes on ….
The Vogue images are a direct reference to the 2009-2010 photographic series Perry Welty did entitled “Lost In My Life” based on the materials of her earlier work. How she comes up with these things — or has the obsessive patience to produce them — I can’t even imagine.
Rachel Perry Welty’s “Lost In My Life” series – images via unbiasedwriter.com
The height of the genius of Rachel Perry Welty, however, is in her now iconic video “Karaoke Wrong Number”. Given copyright issues I cannot reproduce the video here. But if you ever have the chance to see it, I promise that you will pee in your pants. Money back guarantee. An excerpt can be seen in this WGBH spot about the Rachel Perry Welty show at the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, MA here. (The “Karaoke Wrong Number”excerpt begins at minute 1:30.)
