Bernadette Corporation (John Kelsey, Antek Walzcak, Bernadette van Huy) (NY/FR) was founded in 1994. The group maintains a purposeful distance from their subjects/matter, embracing a collective refusal of a fixed character or practice (film, fashion, sculpture, publications). Their work is a pre-cursor to this current vocabulary of image-making, authorship, appropriation, and branding. Subjectivity is typically the framework and the question. The group somehow undergo an internal restructuring with each project, with new collaborators and new modes of authorship emerging consistently. Appealing and ambiguous on its own terms, they avoid and still are responsible for a distinctive take on the popular marketplace, and the impulses that shape it. Interconnectedness minus spirituality as a form of corporate identity.

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Bernadette Corporation: The Complete Poem. The group commissioned fashion photographer David Vasiljevic to make a series of images based on his Levi's campaign. A sense of poetic vacancy and studied beauty permeates, pitted against and in concert with the epic poem. The language in the end is as unresolved as the unstable relationship between art and commodity. 11" x 8.5"; 172 pages. $40.

For more work by Bernadette Corporation, please visit Badlands Unlimited. The publishing imprint started by artist Paul Chan utilizes a multi-platform delivery for its titles. They have now made available Made in USA, Bernadette's seminal magazine published 1999-01. The three issues may be purchased as hi-resolution e-books, downloadable for the iPad, iPhone, and iTouch.

Made in USA, Issue 1. Purchase on Apple

Made in USA, Issue 2. Purchase on Apple

Made in USA, Issue 3. Purchase on Apple