A real value!

“Will fit comfortably“ “Well made in every way” “Comes in stripes or plane plain colors” “Dependable quality” “A real value!” These and other appealing features can be read next to the images of products listed in an 1930 catalog of the American retailer Sears. Makeup, bras and dolls for her. Guns, hunting clothes and liquors for him. She will be a caring wife, he will drive a real truck, similar to the little one he used to play with as a child. As old fashioned as it might seem, the small world contained in the sales catalog was just the foundation of what would come next. Advertisement and the products we consume shaped us until we ourselves became the real value. Our self-image and private sphere are being sold and enable more sales. And since we are the currency, we also come to be standardized too, like a coin. “A real value!” is an exhibition about objects made into ideology and people made into objects. Blanca Amorós digs through the leftovers of Western goods production –such as that 1930 catalog– and, by rearranging the fragments in her paintings, deconstructs some of the main mythologies of our post-industrial society, especially those concerning gender and productivity, such as the feminine-masculine opposition –and its implicit hierarchical construction of society–, or the ideological vision of women as either mothers or objects of desire. This installation-like exhibition consists of constellations of paintings and objects with a hint of irony, and where various perspectives are are offered to the viewer to connect these elements. “A real value!” conveys a process of re-contextualization that discloses the other side of images around us, a questioning analysis of the inherent domination by the capitalistic production through the consumption of goods.