Josh Kline United States, b. 1979
Traversing installation, video, sculpture and photography, the works of Josh Kline (b. 1979) investigate how urgent socio-political issues – AI technologies, state surveillance, climate change, the weakening of democracy, and so on – impact America’s working class. In Stock (Walmart Worker’s Arms) belongs to his series ‘Blue Collars’ (2014–20), in which low-paid workers, such as delivery drivers, restaurant servers, janitors and store workers had 3D scans made of their heads, arms or legs. From these, models were created and incorporated into sculptures with objects related to their respective jobs: a FedEx worker’s head rests in an open delivery box; a waitress’s hands sit amidst burgers and fries and, as seen here, a Walmart employee’s arms lie in a shopping cart filled with goods. Each unsettling piece presents a fragmented, dehumanised portrait of an individual worker, inviting broader reflections on the commodification of labour and human capital within a highly transactional consumer society.
Exhibitions
Metz, Centre Pompidou-Metz, A Gateway To Possible Worlds, November 2022 – April 2023
New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Josh Kline: Project for a New American Century, April – August 2023 (another edition)