STEVEN HAMPTON

In Super Salon, painters working with Autonomie gallery come together in order to question the limits and parameters of group exhibitions in contemporary art fairs. Super Salon is the result of 13 individual painterly practices presented in the guise of one optical super-event. As such, all the artists included suffer the prioritizing of one work per wall, in order to blanket the transient POD space. Set against a fabric backdrop of domestic patterning, textured carpets, and comfortable seating, a critical investigation into what it is to exhibit at art fairs of today is played out. The painters of Super Salon create tension between the relationship of Salon style practices of the 18th and 19th century and fair exhibitions of the current day, and, by doing so, make tenuous binaries of individual and collective. This process shows the rarified work contemplating its eventual relationship with a market destination. As such, Super Salon is a spectacular event of optical overindulgence, a type of visual binge tinged with the creeping uncertainties of the market and the necessities of commerce that support its location. The 13 painters included agree to collide visual aesthetics and practices in the space of Super Salon in order to embrace this space of collective critique.