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Buck Ellison — Untitled (Nonprofit)
Buck Ellison

Untitled (Nonprofit)

2018

Untitled (Nonprofit) from 2018 presents a meticulously staged group portrait in which each full-time staff member of Swiss Institute has been replaced by a Hollywood stand-in, the assembled doubles posed as a cohesive team within an idealized gallery interior. Mineral water, a curated stack of institutional publications, and the clean geometry of the space all contribute to an image that reads, at first glance, as an entirely plausible workplace photograph. The substitution is the conceptual hinge: what appears to document professional community is in fact a constructed fiction, one that mimics the grammar of institutional identity while quietly emptying it of its actual subjects. This work extends Buck Ellison's sustained inquiry into the visual codes through which American aspiration is performed, inherited, and legitimized. Beginning with a 2017 project in which family members were replaced by actors for a Christmas card portrait, Ellison has developed a practice centered on the social rituals and image conventions of a particular socioeconomic stratum, examining how those conventions reproduce themselves across domestic, professional, and institutional contexts. The nonprofit arts world, with its careful self-presentation and overlapping registers of cultural and class capital, proves to be fertile territory for that interrogation. Available as an archival inkjet print on paper in an edition of three, the work measures 127 by 95.3 cm and is signed by the artist. The scale supports the photograph's air of official credibility, large enough to hold its institutional posture while rewarding the closer attention that reveals its premise. Collectors acquiring work from this edition gain entry into one of Ellison's most pointed site-specific gestures, a portrait of an art world institution made entirely without the people who constitute it.

Medium
Archival inkjet print on paper
Overall
Signed
Yes

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About this work

Buck Ellison, Untitled (Nonprofit), 2018

Untitled (Nonprofit) from 2018 presents a meticulously staged group portrait in which each full-time staff member of Swiss Institute has been replaced by a Hollywood stand-in, the assembled doubles posed as a cohesive team within an idealized gallery interior. Mineral water, a curated stack of institutional publications, and the clean geometry of the space all contribute to an image that reads, at first glance, as an entirely plausible workplace photograph. The substitution is the conceptual hinge: what appears to document professional community is in fact a constructed fiction, one that mimics the grammar of institutional identity while quietly emptying it of its actual subjects. This work extends Buck Ellison's sustained inquiry into the visual codes through which American aspiration is performed, inherited, and legitimized. Beginning with a 2017 project in which family members were replaced by actors for a Christmas card portrait, Ellison has developed a practice centered on the social rituals and image conventions of a particular socioeconomic stratum, examining how those conventions reproduce themselves across domestic, professional, and institutional contexts. The nonprofit arts world, with its careful self-presentation and overlapping registers of cultural and class capital, proves to be fertile territory for that interrogation. Available as an archival inkjet print on paper in an edition of three, the work measures 127 by 95.3 cm and is signed by the artist. The scale supports the photograph's air of official credibility, large enough to hold its institutional posture while rewarding the closer attention that reveals its premise. Collectors acquiring work from this edition gain entry into one of Ellison's most pointed site-specific gestures, a portrait of an art world institution made entirely without the people who constitute it.

Medium
Archival inkjet print on paper
Dimensions
overall: 127 x 95.3 cm
Year
2018
Edition
of 3
Signed
Hand-signed by the artist
Seen at
Swiss Institute Benefit Auction

Related themes

Mohn Art Collective

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