NYAB Event - Jennifer Dalton "The Reappraisal"

Jennifer Dalton "The Reappraisal"

Winkleman Gallery

This event has ended.

In "The Reappraisal," everything in the house Dalton shares with her husband and four-year-old son is for sale, provided would-be collectors are willing to pay the price arrived at through her family's level of attachment to a particular object. Every household item—from graduate student paintings to the cleaning supplies under the kitchen sink to the planter in the back yard—has been photographed and appraised by both her and, again, Christie’s auction house. Presented in simple frames on rows of industrial shelving, like volumes in a library, each photograph and description has been color-coded by object type and placed in order by Dalton’s level of attachment to it, and thus by what she calls "Your Price."

Each object actually has three values attached to it: What Dalton thinks the item might be worth to other people; what Christie's thinks the item is worth based on their expertise; and "Your Price," the price at which it can be purchased through the exhibition. "Your Price" ranges from $500,000 on the high end for irreplaceable tchotchkes passed down through her family to minus $5, meaning Dalton will give you $5 if you come to her house and take it away. More than a follow-up to the project Dalton first did 10 years ago, "The Reappraisal" is a meditation on materialism, growing up, and the extent to which we can properly judge ourselves and each other by the contents of our bookshelves, refrigerators and medicine cabinets.