Contributed by Bonnie Morano / Years ago, when I first learned about the “pink tax” – the price mark-up on razors, deodorant, shampoo and other products marketed to women – I was outraged. A recent trip to the art supply store had me cursing the $96 price tag for Cad Yellow Deep (it is like a tube of sunshine, though) I wondered whether I was being charged an art tax. Oil paint, of course, is unique, but what about other art necessities? Do art supply stores charge more for materials that can be found elsewhere at lower prices? If so, would it be feasible to curb such price discrimination? After all, California just passed a law banning the pink tax.
Tag: Miles Debas
Serious fun with Miles Debas
Contributed by Liz Scheer / In his new exhibition “Sundowning“at Freight + Volume, Miles Debas utilizes a mixture of collaged and sculptural elements to create works that are at once whimsical and intellectually provocative. The press release says his hanging sculptures adhere to a “dream-like logic,” and that’s an apt statement. The bits of cloth and color are like snapped-off impressions – pieces of waking life – that cohere into a whole that implies but falls short of legibility. Describing a painting as “dream-like,” though, suggests that it is surrealist. With their floating symbols and jewel-toned colors, Debas’ constructions could certainly be so characterized. But there’s a way to read these pieces not as representations of the unconscious but rather as odes to moments of agreeable miscommunication: instances when conversation that leads nowhere in particular is nonetheless intensely satisfying.