BOULDER, CO.- Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art presents Sharon Feder: BUY, a BMoCA at Macky exhibition featuring a new body of paintings by Colorado-based artist Sharon Feder. On view August 28–November 16, 2014, this exhibition presents works that stem from Feder’s long-standing interest in urban archaeology. This series of work is based on photographs Feder has compiled over the last five years of “big-box stores,” such as Target and IKEA, and of vacant and empty store signs.

Through BUY, Feder explores how the ubiquity of “big-box stores” in both urban and rural environments across the country negatively impacts society and nature. For Feder, the empty signs signify the spoiling effects of American mass-consumerism, which leaves an overabundance of things to buy and makes it difficult for small, independently owned stores to survive. The surplus of readily purchasable goods and materials has instilled a greed for convenience that in turn generates a “throw-away society”—whether in terms of the product purchased or the unimaginative architectural planning of retail stores built quickly and carelessly to serve the needs of mass-consumerism.

Feder’s approach to painting exists between abstraction and representation. She is interested in both the visual and metaphorical geometry and emptiness of large retail stores and their signs. Her handling of paint and use of color draw our attention from the subject of the work to the formal elements of the painting. One can look at the works and see color, shapes, and paint, rather than or in addition to the representation of a retail store. Obvious visual references to specific stores, parking lots, or buildings remind us that Feder paints scenes mired in quotidian detail.

Sharon Feder (b. 1957, Denver, Colorado) is a third-generation Denverite who has studied painting intently since early childhood. Feder’s work has been exhibited in New York, Los Angeles and extensively in the Denver area. Her paintings and murals are included in a number of national and international corporate, private and public collections.