Anna-Sophie Berger's JTT Exhibition Explores Commodity Semiotics Through Postconceptual Assemblages

Austrian artist Anna-Sophie Berger presented an exhibition titled 'The Fool at Sea' at JTT in New York from 4 March to 15 April 2018. The show featured works examining how commodities become coded signifiers within art spaces, including assemblages and assisted readymades. One piece, 'Freedom' (2018), consists of tin-owl earrings designed by the artist's mother for Topshop, modified with necklace locks to avoid copyright issues. Another work, 'onion', displays a photograph of a yellow onion with mysterious Chinese symbols inked on its skin, discovered in a Chinatown vegetable stall. 'Europa Hölzer' reproduces a matchbox cover featuring the EU flag, transforming a familiar symbol into something exotic in the New York gallery context. The exhibition also included a silkscreened NYC Parks and Recreation logo and a repurposed steel box used for charcoal briquette disposal. Berger's work interrogates postconceptualism's vocabulary while questioning the artist's role under neoliberalism. The exhibition was reviewed in the May 2018 issue of ArtReview by Jeppe Ugelvig.