Exhibition: 08.12.2017 – 08.01.2018

“Oligocracy. An absolutely cynical advertising campaign.” –  PSJM – solo show
LOCATION: Sorbonne Artgallery, 12 Place du Panthéon, Aile Soufflot – RDC, 75005 Paris/FR

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For its project Oligocracy, PSJM uses rhetorical-aesthetic strategies in order to highlight what is hidden in broad daylight: the current capitalist system and its sister, liberal democracy, present themselves as the power of the many (neo-liberals call it “consumer power”), while the real power is actually in the hands of a few, namely a handful of brands that operate as shields for conglomerates.

Oligocracy brings together nine compositions representing current Big Three brands. The Big Three, which originally referred to the major brands of the automobile industry (Ford, Chrysler, General Motors), is a term commonly used in the business world to designate the three leading companies in a given sector. PSJM’s compositions assemble and combine these brands to create a contemporary emblem evoking some sort of new feudalism, an idea expanded by Jean Ziegler in “The Empire of Shame” and “The New Masters of the World”.

The display of the work was specifically adapted to the Pantheon-Sorbonne location, where Sorbonne Artgallery is located. The sumptuous architecture of the space is particularly suitable to establish a link with another theme implicit in the aesthetic composition of the project: the relationship between power and knowledge, which Foucault rendered clear in his genealogies and archeology of knowledge. In Oligocracy, as in all of PSJM’s projects, the artists embrace a multitude of references and unfold several levels of meaning, which guide their aesthetic decisions. The gold lettering refers to gold as a symbol of political power and economic power; the black silk that serves as a backdrop to the new “feudal emblems” of the Big Three embodies a model of capitalist domination, which submits the citizen through the promise of comfort and luxury. Ambitious advertising leads to a fundamental ideological deception, convincing consumers that everyone can have access to luxury (a false democratization of luxury). Capitalist power caresses you while you succumb to it: it is no coincidence that the font chosen for the word “Oligocracy” is Champagne & Limousines.

The promise of democratic luxury and the concealment of a system (oligarchy) by another (democracy) through the rhetoric of power is at the root of this aesthetic project about political economy. The Sorbonne Artgallery frames where the work is displayed seem particularly suitable for advertising images -they are indeed reminiscent of advertising billboards, whose European tycoon JC Decaux is headquartered in Paris-. But not for any advertising image, since the architectural environment of the Sorbonne commands a reflection on the associations between power, knowledge, economy, politics and aesthetics that can not be shown otherwise than as a form of silky, yet obscure domination.

With this project, PSJM returns to its critique of the ideological universe of brands. This is quite significant given the censorship to which the artists were subjected to recently*, bringing once more the power of the business world to the center of their aesthetic and political concerns.

PSJM is a team of creation, theory and management formed by Cynthia Viera (Las Palmas G.C., 1973) and Pablo San José (Mieres, 1969). PSJM present themselves as an art brand, thus appropriating the procedures and strategies of advanced capitalism to subvert their symbolic structures.

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Exhibition: 01.10.2017 – 31.10.2017

“Superdemocracy – The Senate of Things” – group exhibition with PSJM 
LOCATION: M HKA MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART ANTWERP, Leuvenstraat 32, 2000 Antwerp/ BL
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Curated by Bart De Baere, Pierre Olivier-Rollin, Paul Dujardin.

The exhibition SUPERDEMOCRACY engages with the collections of M HKA (Antwerp) and BPS22 (Charleroi). The exhibitions allows the voices of individual artists – both nationally and internationally – and citizens to be heard on important themes associated with the Senate and democracy. SUPERDEMOCRACY takes place in the Senate, following a path granting visitors access to prestigious places, such as the peristylium and the hemisphere, or exclusive ones like the presidential salons, the salon of the ambassadors, the office of the registrar, etc.

PSJM acts as a commercial cutting-edge art brand. Their work questions the economic reality with an interdisciplinary and critical practice emphasizing spectacular seduction techniques of late capitalism. PSJM concentrate on creating paintings of various sizes and media including lacquered aluminum, laminate on wood, acrylic on natural linen and gouache or ink on paper. In addition, the artist duo has expanded its creative work to sculptures, mural paintings and videos focusing on economy and society.
Their work has been featured in numerous exhibitions throughout Europe, USA, Chile, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Cuba, Russia and South Korea – including “Beyond the Tropics” within the context of the 56th Venice Biennale, PS1- MOMA, New York; Riflemaker Gallery; Fundació Joan Miró etc.
In parallel to their visual research, carrying out an intense theoretical and literary activity, they have published the novel “La Isla de Hidrógeno” (Empatía, Madrid, 2010) and the books “Neutralizados” (Empatía, Madrid, 2009), “Fuego amigo. Dialéctica del arte político en el capitalismo total” (Cendeac, Murcia, 2015) and, in collaboration with José Mª Durán, “Total Market: Mercado Total” (AURAL EDICIONES, Alicante, 2015).
PSJM’s works have been included in “Art & Agenda: Political Art and Activism” (Gestalten, Berlin, 2011) and in “Younger than Jesus. Artist Directory. The essential handbook to the future of art” published by the New Museum (Phaidon, NY, 2012), “Arte Español Contemporáneo 1992-2013” (La Fábrica, Madrid, 2014) and “Come Together: The Rise of Cooperative Art and Design” (Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 2014).

Participating artists: Marina Abramovic & Ulay, Suchan Kinoshita, Marcel Broodthaers, Jan van Imshoot, Michel Francois, Anne-Mie van Kerckhoven, Francois Curlet, Jet Geys, Thierry Verbeke, Sheela Gowda, Emilio López-Menchero, Ria Pacquée, Sasha Pirogova, ORLAN, Tapta, Liliane Vertessen, Denmark, Guy Mees, Edith Dekyndt, Luc Deleu, Pascale Marthine Tayou, Victor Alimpiev & Marian Zhunin, Christophe Terlinden, Jean-Francois Octave, Taus Makhacheva, Miriam Cahn, Johanna Kanel, Yang Zhenzhong, Charlotte Ueaudry, Koka Ramishvili, Kendeli Geers, René Heyvaert, Narcisse Tordoir, Willi Filz, Vase Colton, Marcel Bernger, Marthe Wéry, Carla Arocha, Véronique Vercheval, Vanessa vVan Obberghen, Angel Vergara.

Exhibition: 11.10.2017 – 04.02.2018

“Nous sommes Foot” – group exhibition with PSJM 
LOCATION: MUCEM, 7 Prom. Robert Laffont, 13002 Marseille/ France
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Curated by Florent Molle.

The exhibition “nous sommes Foot” represents the international importance of football by showing more than 300 objects. Football connects people so much that it is almost appropriate to assign this sport with adjectives such as “social”, “cultural” or “political”. In the streets of Paris or Marseille, in the ports of Istanbul or Athens, in the suburbs of Algiers or on the beaches of Malaga, the popularity of football is second to none. Nevertheless, football sometimes embodies the opposite: division, violence, racism and fanaticism.

Whether in the underprivileged cities of Marseille, in the posts of Istanbul or Athen, in the suburbs of Algier or on the beaches of Malaga, football, whose popularity is unmatched, has the capacity to make living together the habitants of the Mediterranean. On the contrary, this sport also reflects the image of a Mediterranean crossed by social cleavages, violence, racism and fanaticism. If it remains the embodiment of meritocratic ideal, football is also a revealer of the global economic imbalances. Faced with the extraordinary financial, stakes represented by the “football business”, the cases of frauds multiply, during the matches as during the attribute of the major competitions. The outcome of the debate on the professionalization of football, initiated by Jules Rimet, founder of the World Cup, and Pierre de Coubertin, creator of Olympus, has changed the face of this sport.

In recent history, the stands of sport arenas have been places of confrontation and propaganda. They also echoed citizen commitments from players and supporters who took over football to return to the source of the game and defend the normal and humanist values it carries, which are having respect for the rules and the opponent, as well as self-surpassing, solidarity and team spirit. Thus, football offers us a magnifying mirror of the moral values and political ideologies of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It is a revelation of our societies, a reflection of what is darker and more luminous.

Note: The Work by PSJM got censored one week after the opening and was deleted from the exhibition.

Exhibition: 07.10.2017 – 09.12.2017

“Correlaciones” – group exhibition with PSJM 
LOCATION: CENTRO DE HOLOGRAPHIA Y ARTES DADOS NEGROS, Calle Fuente Quintana, 3, 13320 Villanueva des los Infantes, Cdad. Real, Spain
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PSJM is currently showing a video work titled El Ocaso de los Estados Nación (The Dawn of the Nation) at Centro de Holografia y Artes Dados Negros. In this they imagined a kind of a insatiable virus, which is gnawing the flags of the cities New York, Frankfurt, Paris, London, Tokyo and Hong Kong. The symbols of the national states are swallowed up by the harmful parasites, which call themselves the “dictatorship of the markets”.

PSJM aims at criticizing a kind of regime which relentlessly performs a new feudalism in which countries and citizens are defeated by debts. As Jean Ziegler,a favorite critic of PSJM, they question the intercontinental enterprises of the industries, banks, services, and trade. According to Ziegler the new-fashioned feudal systems are “more powerful, cynical, brutal and smarter than the ancients”. The welfare state is fatally attacked by the fist of the markets, while this pretends support. The work of the artists represented in the exhibition “correlaciones” reproduce neither reality nor reflection on it, but details of a reality. They raise up to previously unknown questions about the knowledge and the memory. Nothing remains unchanged, while a standstill could possibly be generated by our perception of reality. In our thinking the world is fragmented into different units, so that we always perceive it as fragmented. This creates a static, lifeless behavior which limits our creativity in everyday life. The fragmentation of reality also causes the reference of information to be lost. There are only fragile boundaries between reality and appearance.

Participating artists:
Analía Beltrán i Janés, Luis Camnitzer, José María Guijarro, Víctor López, Ana Matey, PSJM, Asunción Molinos Gordo, Suso Saiz, Avelino Sala, Isidoro Valcárcel.