Auction Action

Customs forged by the Ebay dominion are axioms of online economy and contemporary supply-demand community. The dotcom stalwart is itself dually legitimate medium for net art as well as an opportune site for experimentation and performance within and in defiance of the protocols of E-commerce. The tradition of Ebay-negotiated art actions has been chronicled by New York artist Jillian Mcdonald in 'EBAY: Buy or Sell or Buy', and now is your last chance to explore this formative exhibition online at Pace University's Digital Gallery, through September 6th. Carlo Zanni's 'Ebay Landscape' mines the virtual auction house for quantitative resources: stock quotes he datavisualizes as a craggy horizon describing part of a 'live' (hit refresh) wilderness. Eteam contracts Ebay as a real estate agent through which they click-purchase a plot of earth in Utah, '1.1 Acre Flat Screen', onto which they project an increase in value that is mediated by an Ebay resale. Rather than measuring art by mountains or market price, Nicholas Dumit Estevez puppeteers Ebay to transubstantiate a bid of $152.50 (precisely the going rate for Keith Obadike's 'Blackness') into pure artistic expression in 'Consartcration: Free Art For Sale', of which the winning bidder pays only fees owed to Ebay in order to inherit her prize. - Kevin McGarry