People, Numbers, Millions and Competition

In the 'People, Numbers, Millions and Competition' project I investigate the layers of an artwork produced by its institutionalization and market appropriation. Studying video records of auction bidding, I use transcripts of the auctioneer’s words to create textual compositions, thus commenting on the artwork’s decontextualization and alienation from both its subject matter and artist.
The project consists of several parts. I started by reinterpreting the sold works: while keeping their formal characteristics (acrylic on canvas and measurements) I painted the bidding transcripts to fill the whole canvas surface. The prints and books are another layer of the project. Working with transcripts, I extracted simple words (grouped semantically and spatially) that demonstrate the relations between buyers and artworks, as well as dynamics of the auction process. I separated four layers which occur on the artwork after in arrives in the art-world. These layer form the name of the project and are now a set of four books representing each phenomenon. The book 'People' only consists of the names of the bidders, as extracted from the text. 'Numbers' only holds the amounts of the bids; 'Millions' only has the word 'million' as is occurs in the transcribed text; 'Competition' consists of sentences and words which contain elements of rivalry between the different buyers.