As the coevolution of museums and galleries continues, their shared strategies become increasingly apparent. The logic of the gift shop–allow visitors to engage in commerce related to unbuyable, historic cultural objects–is native to a museum space, but a bit newer for a gallery. The Gagosian’s Shop is an exciting transportation of the gift shop model from fundraiser to business model: the cultural values being capitalized on are not unbuyable because of their removal from the economy, as in a museum setting, but because of their extreme participation in it. Rodrigo Trombini Pires’ latest work, a series of unsolicited ads for the Gagosian Shop, elevates the store’s branding to a higher level, rendering its products on the same aesthetic level as the artworks they are meant to disseminate.

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Video Rodrigo Trombini Pires