Statement:

Galerie Nicolas Robert Toronto is pleased to present "The Return Project", the first solo exhibition in Toronto by Vancouver-based artist Babak Golkar. Through his signature conceptual approach to performance, sculpture, photography and installation, Golkar works to disrupt dominant narratives of meaning and copyright, questioning value and challenging logic. of the art market. Since 2014, he has been involved in a framework of performative interventions that he imposed on himself and which is collectively called The Return Project.///

Each work begins with a wandering of the artist in the aisles of large distribution chains such as Winners or Home Sense. Eventually, he selects an object based on its potential for critical and aesthetic intervention. He then purchases the object and takes it to his studio, where it is documented, altered, and re-documented with the original price tag and packaging still intact. The altered item is signed and dated, a notice of authenticity is attached, and it is returned using the original purchase receipt to an undisclosed store. Once put back on the shelves, it is reabsorbed into the realm of consumption, creating a work of art that resides both inside and outside the art market. Although documented evidence of the

Oscillating between ready-made and ready-to-exhibit, documentation and performance, consumer product and art object, these works occupy a slippery space between collection, exhibition and conservation, where the consumer and the producer are only two phases of the same operation. Mass consumerism and the unique art object are both scrutinized, but they are not opposed to each other. On the contrary, The Return Project disrupts the hierarchy between top and bottom, embracing a discontinuity of production that offers a transparent critique of an economic system based on the bias of desire.