In our world being saturated with images, “The Supermarket of Images” exhibition at the Jeu de Paume, until June 7th 2020, in Paris, works wonders at addressing questions about the economic aspect of images, deriving from the chief curator Peter Szendy’s book, “The Supermarket of the Visible”, and notably the concept of “iconomy” — a neologism from “icon” and “economy” inspired by a quote of Gilles Deleuze.

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With his monumental photograph Amazon (2016) Andreas Gursky delivers a memorable image of the vast warehouses of today’s commodi ed culture. But images themselves are also stockpiled – to the point of over owing, as in the cascade of 20,000 negatives Ana Vitória Mussi stages in Por Um Fio (1977–2004) or the avalanche of internet pages accumulated in the cache memory that Evan Roth has used to cover museum spaces (Since You Were Born, 2019–2020). For Storage (2019), Geraldine Juárez has cast old or recent media supports, such as cassettes or USB sticks, in ice.

But by placing the gettyimages® watermark on a mirror (Gerry Images, 2014), she suggests that the entirety of the visible could turn into a data bank. The beginnings of this becoming-stock of visibility can be seen in the collection of photography manuals from various periods that Zoe Leonard has piled up (How to Make Good Pictures, 2016) – and perhaps already in the diagrams that Kazimir Malevich used to represent the great movements of iconic circulation in the history of art.

The Supermarket of Images
Date: February 11th – June 7th, 2020
Open: 11:00 – 19:00 (Tuesday till 21:00)
Closed on Monday
Place: Jeu de Paume
Address: 
1 place de la Concorde
, 75008 Paris
Admissions: Adult 10 €, Students and Seniors 7,50 €
Tel: +33 (0)1 4703 1250
http://www.jeudepaume.org