Jean Lowe – Beer Stack, 2011, enamel on cardboard, papier-mâché, wood, 44-3/4″ x 38-1/2″ x 22-3/4″
Photo: Grant Mudford
Last night at
Art San Diego’s Hilton opening party, there was a great amount of fantastic work to see. But as these things generally go, you tend to feel like you’re in a makeshift gallery in a hotel conference room. Enter
Jean Lowe’s Discount Barn. This installation transformed the
Quint Contemporary Art booth into an alternate reality an actual crowded little supermarket where people interacted with the clerks to purchase handmade supermarket products like cereal boxes and packaged cookies right on the spot. It’s slightly walled in, and as you turn the corner, you enter this bright, cheery place practically pulled from a 1950s ad, with goods piled up and ready to purchase. It’s fun to imagine Lowe and the Quint gallery conceptualizing the installation, as if they sat around a table asking, “Hmm… how can we work this so we’re not competing with all the cubicles around us in a carpeted hotel ballroom?” And they found the perfect, successful solution.
