Joe Yorty

My work engages the community through collaboration in which folks unknowingly approach, contribute to or operate within works of conceptual art through the act of everyday living. My effort is an exposure of a ready-made culture critique through sequences of object injection into and image extraction from the public. With the insertion of an artist edition of outdated kitsch into the second-hand store industry I attempt an investigation into capitalist commodity flow and simultaneously generate critique of art object value (the thrift store is transformed into venue for the avant-garde and the second-hand shopper is inadvertently elevated to fine art collector). And through the obsessive accumulation and filing of digital photographs accompanying craigslist advertisements for free couches I've archived a vast collection of images that reveals a culture of immense leisure excess while subsequently amassing the portrait pixels of the American living room.