Katya Mezhibovskaya's 'Access Excess' at Chashama ABC Gallery reimagines art theory as supermarket goods

Katya Mezhibovskaya presented her senior thesis exhibition 'Access Excess' at Chashama ABC Gallery in New York City from April 30 to May 7, 2008. The show featured assisted readymades that packaged influential art theories and concepts into faux-commodities resembling everyday grocery items. Mezhibovskaya, a graphic design student at the School of Visual Arts, created works such as cereal boxes labeled 'Mary Kelly' and 'Post Modernism' salt, alongside products referencing Walter Benjamin, Clement Greenberg, and Minimalism. Her art critically engages with the textbook 'Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism' by Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois, and Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, which emphasizes Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol. By turning trendy theories into supermarket-style boxes—like 'Michel Foucault: Discipline & Punish' cleaning powder and 'Sophie Calle Voyeur' butter—she reverses Warhol's move of elevating banal objects into art. The exhibition serves as a commentary on the dominance of leftist academic discourse in art history, as noted in the review. Philosopher Arthur Danto's analysis of Warhol's 'Brillo Box' and the legacy of Duchamp's ready-mades are contextualized through Mezhibovskaya's work. The review positions her art as an original supplement to Duchamp's ready-mades and Danto's commentary, inviting further discussion from art historians and philosophers.