RETURN POLICY
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IDEAL SHOPPING
GERALD MEAD, Buffalo ARTVOICE, MAY 2013
What is so fascinating about the artist’s multi-disciplinary investigation into this subject is how Rywelski has thoroughly analyzed the strategies and “visual language” of consumerism and used that language to introduce a dialogue about how we construct our own identities. The notion that “buying makes us who we imagine ourselves to be” is a very fertile subject and Rywelski explores that concept with insight and wit.
The exhibition begins with the most ubiquitous artifacts of the shopping experience—cash register receipts. Rywelski has made these lowly scraps of creased and folded paper into grandiose objects by enlarging them several hundred times their actual size. Shifting their scale elevates their importance and reveals (to the careful observer) their real relevance to the exhibition. They are each intentionally crafted documents created by the artist as she purchased and then returned products to various big-box stores. The first letter of each item on the receipt spells out a word, vertically, on the receipt. This is called an acrostic, which is a form of literary entertainment that dates to ancient times. The receipts are divided into three series, each with a different question. For example, the Yellow Series answers the question “Why am I shopping?” Answers: CHOICE, LIFE, SAFETY, etc.
ART VOICE Back Page Art
Buffalo ARTVOICE, Liz Rywelski: A Shopping Guide, June 2013
From Liz Rywelski's recent MFA thesis show at UB's Anderson GAllery. "Rywelski is a native of Long Island who studied and worked in Philadelphia before coming to UB in 2010," writes art critic Gerald Mead. "The focus of her work over several years is deceptively simple. All of her photographs, large-scale prints, web-based media, games, and performances reference shopping, or more accurately, the 'culture of consumerism.'"
Commodification of the Self
Cat Dawson, PhD, Visual Studies Grad Catalog, 2013
FISTING. ANAL. LIFE. LIBERTY : The acrostics that run the length of receipts from Target
simultaneously bespeak, and render absurd, the visual imagery in a store that seeks to
cater to a universal clientele. In Return Policy, Liz Rywelski purchases lists of items from
big box retailers, ensuring that the items purchased are rung up in a particular order
to create acronyms on her receipts. The cycle is completed when she goes back to
the store to return the items. The juxtaposition of hypersexual terms such as anal and
fisting with ones like freedom and domain — key themes of American national identity —
actually destabilize the mythology of the national body as homogenous, coherent whole.
The use of receipts, perhaps the most legible symbol of capitalist exchange, as the
medium for articulating socio-political messages further points to a significant thematic
in contemporary society whereby activism, or intentionally subversive practice, is either
mobilized through, or reabsorbed into, mainstream culture.
