SFMOMA’s Pop-Up ‘Shadowshop’: All Artwork Less Than $250
Author:Shoshana Berger
Even the person who has everything won’t have this: Damien Hirst’s chopped up shark, floating in a bath of formaldehyde and viewed through a casket-like vitrine. You can yank the original out of Charles Saatchi’s living room, or buy the miniature version, by Bay Area-artist Byungjoon Shin, for a mere $89.99.
Shin’s work is among hundreds of artists’ tchotchkes, books, sculptures, media, and other creative output on sale at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s Shadowshop, a pop-up art store where nothing costs over $250.
Shadowshop is the brainchild of Stephanie Syjuco, who extended the invitation to a gamut of local artists to sell original wares and reap 100% of pre-tax sales. Syjuco writes on her website that she wanted to provide a “snapshot of our vibrant and energetic art scene,” along with challenging received notions of artistic production and consumption. Plus, “Everyone loves a gift shop.”
Contributing artist Amanda Hughen relished the idea: “It was invigorating to expand beyond drawing and painting into making useful objects for the store,” she says. “After walking through galleries of static paintings and sculpture, it is electrifying to come upon this hive of activity in a museum gallery.”
Hughen’s “Path-O-Gen Travel Mug”, a ceramic cup and cozy with hand-painted viral and topographic patterns that “protect the user against illness and disorientation,” sell for $38.
The shop will be open from November 20—May 1, 2011. Don’t miss the Grand Opening Artist Party Thursday night, December 2 in the fifth-floor overlook gallery from 7:00 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.
Can’t make it? See the Shadowshop live in this nifty video at SFMOMA’s Facebook page. Or, read about the artists and their offerings in the Shadowshop blog.
Shoshana Berger got her magazine chops at Wired in the pre-Facebook era, then went on to write for The New York Times, Spin, Salon, The San Francisco Chronicle, Business 2.0, Travel and Leisure, and Sunset. In 1999, she became an editorial director for Young & Rubicam’s Brand Futures division. She cofounded ReadyMade magazine in 2001 and served as its Editor-in-Chief for nine years. She is the coauthor of ReadyMade: How to Make Almost Everything (Crown, 2005), which was featured in the 2007 Cooper-Hewitt Design Triennial. She has lectured and taught workshops at Stanford, the Dallas Museum of Art, IDEO, Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, and in Clay Felker’s magazine program at UC Berkeley.
