Wall Drawing #1

Wall Drawing #1

Sean Weisgerber’s new series of wall drawings stems from his ongoing Price Per Square Inch series of paintings. At Open Studio, the artist will execute the first work in this series, Wall Drawing #1, using a price gun to place fluorescent pink price stickers in each square inch of the gallery walls’ surface. Each sticker is marked with the date it was executed and its price, breaking down the CARFAC exhibition fee paid to the artist by Open Studio into 11,520 units.

Price Per Square Inch

Over the past few years, Weisgerber has been developing his Price Per Square Inch series. In each work, a price sticker (made entirely of acrylic paint) is painted in each square inch of the surface of the painting, marked with its current market price. These paintings highlight the structured system used by galleries to determine the commercial value of paintings, examining the mechanics of paintings’ commodification. Once the ‘price stickers’ have been created, Weisgerber adheres each one individually to the surface of the work by hand (using paint), generating an association between the artistic labour required to create the work and its value. Conceptually, this series stemmed from an interest in painting’s long, entangled relationship to the art market. Painting, as a medium, is often seen as the high commodity ‘cash cow’ of the visual arts. As a painter, Weisgerber wants to deconstruct and reflect on this entanglement, as a means to understand how these inherent market factors tacitly guide and distort our perception of paintings’ intrinsic value.

Read a Peripheral Review interview about Weisgerber’s work here.

—

Sean Weisgerber studied at the Emily Carr University of Art + Design (Vancouver) and Chelsea College of Art (London). His work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions across Canada, exhibiting at The Plumb (Toronto), Wil Aballe Art Projects (Vancouver), the Mendel Art Gallery (Saskatoon), AKA Artist-Run (Saskatoon), Cooper Cole Gallery (Toronto) and the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa) as a finalist in the RBC Painting Competition. He has forthcoming exhibitions at The Plumb (Toronto), Ace Art (Winnipeg), The New Gallery (Calgary) and The Foreman Gallery at Bishop’s University (Sherbrooke). He lives and works in Toronto.