Jonathan Berger: The Store
The Aspen Art Museum, Colorado
December 1, 2020—December 31, 2021

The Aspen Art Museum (AAM) is pleased to announce a total re-imagining of the AAM store by American artist Jonathan Berger. Launching December 1, 2020, Berger will completely transform the museum store into an ambiguous environment that is at once an exhibition, social space, and place of commerce. More than 350 objects will be on display, all of which will be for sale in store and online, with prices ranging from free to $50,000.

The new AAM store is inspired by the artist’s own experiences, working and shopping in downtown New York in the 1990s, in spaces that shared characteristics with artistic projects. It also contributes to a history of artist-led stores, notably Claes Oldenburg’s The Store (1961), and Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas’s The Shop (1993), as well as longer-running projects including Sara Penn’s Knobkerry (1965–2006)—where David Hammons bought African art and staged an installation in 1995, Hans-Peter Feldmann’s Laden (1975–2015) which ran for forty years in Düsseldorf, and Keith Haring’s Pop Shop
(1986–2005). Berger’s project honors this multifaceted legacy, as well as engages with and interrogates the “Wunderkammer” tradition which emerged in the seventeenth century.

The new AAM store will present Berger’s personal selection of new, antique, and dead stock items from varying regions and time periods, bringing together jewelry, textiles, toys, furniture, ephemera, fragrances, ceramics, glassware, and household objects, as well as folk art and contemporary art. Items will range from 1950s novelty toys in sealed envelopes that read “Imitation Upper and Lower False Teeth” and “Rubber Mouse Looks Real,” to unique drawings by self-taught artist James Castle, make-up paintings by Vaginal Davis, and ceramics by current Carbondale Clay Center resident Trae Story. Other objects will include embellished jewelry designed by Walter Van Beirendonck, fake
Roman glass antiquities, Italian metal “ex-voto” devotional objects depicting body parts, chainmail gloves used for oyster shucking, large handmade black pom-pom strands from India known as “Parandi,” which are believed to ward off evil, and original dead stock posters for Charles and Ray Eames's film A Computer Glossary, produced in 1968 for the IBM Corporation's pavilion at the World's Fair in San Antonio, Texas.

In addition, Trygve Harris, founder of the fragrance company Enfleurage, will create a special collection of essential oils specifically for the store, and artist Julie Tolentino will build a monolithic sculpture that will serve as a counter. Ramdasha Bikceem will also produce the first of an ongoing series of soundtracks for the space. Exclusive to the new AAM store’s offerings will be an ongoing partnership with Glenwood Springs Mountain Valley Weavers, who will collaborate with fashion label BODE on a series of garments and housewares featuring their hand-loomed textiles.

Berger’s distinctly democratic philosophy and approach extends into his conception and design of the shop floor. Items will be displayed within turn-of-the-century metal and glass cases, of varying shapes, sizes, and heights. These will be radically altered and customized, obscuring and revealing their contents. Some case doors will be open, allowing objects to be handled, while others will be kept under lock and key. These and other exhibition design strategies aim to flatten aesthetic hierarchies, using the museum context to question the ways in which display contributes to our attribution of value. Simultaneously, the project will question our attitudes towards so-called “low-level” commerce, in opposition to boutique or “luxury” experiences.

At any one time, one of the display cases will be dedicated to the history of a particular store that has inspired Berger, including the history of the legendary New York store Little Rickie and its owner Philip Retzky, who employed Berger personally in the late 1990s. The stores Mythology, Ting’s Giftshop, Craft Caravan, Mie Sin, and Rue St. Denis, operating in New York at the same time, also inspired Berger and inform the development of the project. Despite their different wares and clientele, these stores shared deeply personal expressions of self on the part of their proprietors, as well as unique specialization of endeavor.