"Everything is for sale, from the air to our image" Eugènia Balcells’ great installation at the MACBA
The critique of the world of consumerism and the role played by the mass media were subjects that interested many conceptual artists. This is the case of Eugènia Balcells in SUPERMERCART. An enormous composition, unfolded as a decalogue of consumption, it features small serialised objects as well as images ordered alphabetically and presented in series inside bags of transparent plastic, a format the artist had used previously in her “clear books”. Balcells opts for an aesthetic related to accumulation and codification, two of her habitual operations during those years; both of them had to do with the very essence of consumerism. When the installation was presented at the historical Sala Vinçon in Barcelona in 1976, the strips of objects in this “supermarket” could be purchased, in consonance with the title of the piece.
