Kenosha, Wisconsin (Spilled Milk)

Artist Brian Ulrich American, born 1971

Date2003

MediumChromogenic print

Dimensions30 x 40 in. (76.2 x 101.6 cm)

ClassificationsPhotography

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Friends of Photography

Object number2008.11.2

On View

Not on view

Label Text"In 2001 citizens were encouraged to take to the malls to boost the U.S. economy through shopping, thereby equating consumerism with patriotism. The Copia project, a direct response to that advice, is a long-term photographic examination of the peculiarities and complexities of the consumer-dominated culture in which we live." — Brian Ulrich

Ulrich’s photographs deal directly with issues of contemporary consumer culture and its reflections on issues of class and excess. This work is from the artist’s Copia series, which focuses on malls and big-box retail stores, and the shoppers within. Ulrich describes his photographs as “behavioral studies,” and like an urban anthropologist, he prowls suburban shopping centers with a medium-format camera and a waist-level viewfinder that lets him inconspicuously capture images of consumers in their natural element.
[L. Dougherty, 2009]ProvenanceCreated Kenosha, WI, 2003; collection of the artist; [Julie Saul Gallery, New York]; sold to NCMA, 2008.

Published ReferencesRichard B. Woodward, "Critic's Choice Pick: Brian Ulrich," ARTnews (November 2007), mentioned 240.

MP3: Brian Ulrich (New York: Aperture Foundation, 2006), illus. 13.
Exhibition HistoryRaleigh, NC, North Carolina Museum of Art, "Presence/Absence," November 27, 2011-May 27, 2012.
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