rose+marie+barrientos

I do research on the relationship between art and economy by focusing on artistic expressions resulting from artists' reflection/appropriation/manipulation/etc. of economic elements which are then used as aesthetic material. I am now writing a thesis on what I've designated as 'critical companies', i.e., artist created companies or firms. etoy is of course an example; I have a data base with approximately 50 or so such companies throughout the world, a number that could be significant enough to call this an art "movement" were it not for the very diverging approaches used by the artist's involved. Also this term seems somewhat anacronyc, so I prefer to think of this phenomenon as a "mouvance" or "circle of influence"... As such, it also concerns artists who do not operate as a company but use economic matter as art material. I am also a founding member of the research line Art&Flux with Sorbonne University. We are a group of artists, critics, students in art and aesthetics and art history, dedicated to this subject. We will shortly publish a book on Critical Companies and we run conference cycles in partnership with Sorbonne, Ecole de beaux-arts Paris and the New York University in Paris (last year we invited Stefan Haefliger for etoy, Joep van Lieshout for AVL, Iain Baxter&, Societe Realiste...).

Stefan wrote: I would like to introduce Rose Marie Barrientos to our community. We've met on many occasions over the last three years in Zurich and Paris as she became a good friend and sort of an informal advisor to etoy due to her vast knowledge of art companies:

Rose Marie Barrientos spent several years in the corporate world before dedicating full-time to art history. During her student years (Sorbonne University), she worked as liaison agent for a group of U.S. shareholders in a French telecom firm, an experience that confronted her simultaneously to art and business, and naturally lead her to probe the relationship between the two spheres. For her master's degree, Rose Marie studied business participation in the art world through corporate art collection practices. Her doctoral research, currently underway, considers the "other side of the coin", namely, artistic interventions in the economic sphere. Her thesis focuses on art with economic content and, more specifically, on critical companies, a term she has coined to designate artistic systems that use the corporate model and contemporary economic phenomena as raw material.

Rose Marie worked at the International Council of Museums (ICOM), gaining understanding of the institutional aspects of art, and, as inveterate "art fair-trotter", conducted extensive research on its market mechanisms. She also contributed to the launching of Iconomix, a publication covering art and economy issues. She presently works as logistics agent for several artists operating in this field, and co- directs Art & Flux, a research line lead by artist and professor Yann Toma at CERAP-Sorbonne (Center for studies and research on art). Amitiés. stefan