Retail Apocalypse

The exhibition will reflect on the question of how the value of architectural surface or language is determined.

Architectural form is part of an economic reality and it creates surplus value. The artistic expression—the surface essentially—is therefore most certainly not commercially innocent, as demonstrated by retail applications. Architecture proves to be a motor of seduction that aims to drive consumption and further the logic of capital. Several writers who have addressed the relationship between architecture and value form a literary counterpart in the exhibition: JG Ballard’s novel Kingdom Come on violence and consumerism; Natasha Stagg’s Surveys, in which the protagonist leaves her job at the mall to become a digital influencer; or Janina Gosseye’s and Tom Avermaete’s study of the shopping mall’s influence on both high and pop culture