Wholesale To The Trade Only:
The J. Morgan Puett Incorporated Archive ( 1984-2006 )
Dimensions variable, ongoing.
Beeswax drenched, mixed media
2006
I closed a storefront project on Wooster Street in 1997, and archived all of its contents–from dresses and patterns to financial records and shipping receipts – most of which were preserved with natural beeswax. This Pompeian action was the subject of a 1998 exhibition at the Centre d’Art Contemporain Kunsthalle in Fribourg, Switzerland. Then later at the Swiss Institute in Manhattan. This installation view was at Alexander Gray Associates, where I critically revisited the material at a timely moment, while lines between the art world and luxury branding are still collapsing. Concerned with concepts of the future of exchange, transmogrification, moving from one state to another creating new outcomes that are cyclical rather than linear trajectories.
The beeswax drenched archive of the articles and histories of J. Morgan Puett Incorporated; with all the cloth, costume, drawings, architectural plans and other ephemera such as the hundreds of cancelled checks, many self employed specimens here; paid to the artist, written from the artist corporation and signed by the artist.