Strange Bargain was the Milan presentation of Skuja Braden’s first solo exhibition with kaufmann repetto, presented across the gallery’s New York and Milan venues. The two exhibitions formed distinct yet interconnected projects, bringing together works that explore the intersections of commerce, power, identity, sexuality, and authorship.
The title Strange Bargain refers ironically to the paradoxical nature of commerce, and specifically to the idea of a “bargain” as an advantageous purchase at an unexpectedly low price. The exhibition addressed the exploitative principles of late capitalism while also turning its attention towards the art market itself.
At the centre of this inquiry were Greed, a wall-mounted, slyly smiling skull wearing a crown, and a new iteration of the Charity Collection. The latter takes its name from caritas, one of the seven virtues, and turns the concept of charity into a provocative question about value and exchange. “Charity is free, so how much can one pay for a collection of it?” the artists ask. “What if ‘greed’ sits right next to the collection? What is the price for ‘greed’?” Placed in proximity, the two works create an absurd and deliberately unresolved tension between generosity, accumulation, morality, and monetary value.
Against this backdrop, the Milan exhibition featured several works depicting two women lovers: a buxom blonde Marilyn Monroe and a seductive Geisha. These figures belong to Skuja Braden’s recurring cast of “action figures” and function as the artists’ alter egos. Their fictional identities allow Skuja Braden to investigate the absence of individual authorhood within their collaborative practice, where the boundaries between the two artists are deliberately blurred.
Omnipresent throughout their work, the two figures appear both as lovers engaged in acts of intimacy and as vigilant observers of the many thought-provoking narratives unfolding around them. Moving between eroticism, humor, performance, and observation, they become witnesses to the exuberant and often contradictory world that Skuja Braden constructs through their sculptures.