FOR SALE

For Sale, 2023

Text by Anika Meier

Let's be honest: Art is about prices and selling. About visitor numbers and queuing. About wanting to see and have. About hype and records. A glance at the newspaper is enough for confirmation. An auction record here, an auction record there. $45 million. $40 million. £37 million. And now incomprehensibly high sums are being paid for digital files. $69 million. $92 million. But: Without art, no sales. Therefore, art is first and foremost about art. About concept and communication. About art history and context.

The German conceptual artist Joachim Bosse fetishizes the sale in his solo exhibition "For Sale", as the title suggests, both matter-of-factly and sensationally. The exhibition consists of 15 light boxes in white, red and yellow and a promotional film featuring rapper Massiv, actor Wilson Gonzales and reality star Kader Loth – as befits a sales exhibition. There's Sale, Sale, Sale and percentages. Special offer, thumbs up. New and for rent. Buy 1, get 1 free. "For Sale" is consumption and capitalism, product and promotion.

Bosse comes from advertising. Now he's literally advertising the sale with his art and giving the buyer instructions as in a supermarket or department store. Percentages. Get the percentages. Sale, Sale, Sale. Negotiate and buy. New. Strike now. The negotiating and striking is part of the concept. There's not enough for everyone.

When it's always Sale – a look at shopping streets and the supermarket is enough for confirmation – Sale is a mindset. This also applies to Bosse's art. He not only comes from advertising, but also from artists who come from advertising and have created icons like Warhol with the soup cans. Bosse doesn't even create an icon, namely the SALE and its design, he appropriates the icon and conceptually declines it.

In a society that jumps back and forth between exclamation marks and question marks, art in Bosse's work is decisive and says itself what it offers. The sale of the sale. Special offer!