The term “Secondary Market” refers to a secondary layer of exchange and includes objects thrifted, resold, or used. These categories show the object as a pretext for social encounter and a record of history. In this exhibition, Reid Donato and Kelly Patrick are considering the idiosyncratic ways that objects and images manifest in these secondary marketplaces, how they become familiarized, strange, and sometimes comical. Relationships are mediated by objects purchased, sold, given, and exchanged. Sale “listings” on websites become distinct aesthetic forms to be foregrounded and examined. Images representing objects are stand-ins suited for the flat plane of screens and print.
This show represents diverse perspectives on two fronts. The first through the use of queer erotic ephemera as subject matter, which creates space for an encounter with a lost archive, especially in light of queer erasure that takes place in historiography. The secondary market becomes an important site as an informal archive of these queer histories. Secondly, this show presents an alternative perspective of which transactions are noteworthy. In contemporary coverage of art markets, the precipitous heights of prices are often foregrounded. In this show we ask: What would it look like to foreground transactions that occur in diverse socioeconomic class settings? We consider the stock of items donated and their afterlife in the secondary market. In this respect, this project challenges the hierarchy of art materials, appropriating consumer and post-consumer goods to investigate the value and preservation of objects, art objects, and the human histories they hold.
