One image (book) chosen by Jennifer Piejko:

What’s left when the money moves on? For Bjarne Bare’s latest book, the artist directs his camera onto the remains of capitalism when its gears grind to a halt. Ghostboxes—drab big-box stores deserted for newer big boxes—are bundled up and tied together by endless miles of concrete highways; entire malls and mega banks are torn at the seams and gutted slowly until they are empty, with only the worn shadows of their neon signs leaving any clue of what used to bring visitors to these now-drab greyfields.

The Hollow Man is inspired by the forms and figures that are hand-shaped from scraps of cardboard and on view in a piñata factory near the artist’s home in industrial downtown Los Angeles. Like much of what we have built to keep up with late-stage capitalism’s relentless aggression, the empty paper man in the window will soon be filled with bright, cheap, plastic parts and sugar. This collection of images continues to delve into artistic concepts explored in Bare’s recent exhibitions “Breathing, Together” (2020) and “The Itch” (2021), including fractured contemporary communication, a nostalgia for the present, the increased velocity of consumerism, and more.