Snack Aisle
Recent paintings by Miles Shelton
Sept 15–Oct 31, 2023
Hours via bookshop website
Reception September 15, 6–8 PM
Paper Nautilus Books
19 South Angell Street, Wayland Square
Providence, Rhode Island
Bodega patrons are intimately familiar with a particular type of price sticker. Bright orange with bold, stamped black text, they’re often circular and rectangular—jumping out to compete with an onslaught of brightly designed product packages and deli meat photos that adorn every square inch of these tightly packed mini-megastores.
Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, painter Miles Shelton started collecting the stickers upon finding a single roll of $13.99s for sale in a supermarket back in 2010. Since then, he’s used price tags as a prompt to explore childhood nostalgia, painting-as-documentation, scale, and permanence. “I wanted to share a peek into the collection,” he says, “while also trying to make a perfect “9” on top of an orange that would singe the retina...leaving viewers thinking about it well after they left.”
Studying sign painting tutorial videos on YouTube, Shelton became interested in two strategies: finding strange, warped, or odd price stickers to recreate exactly as-is, and then making up his own numbers, warping them through digital/analog processes such as live scanner manipulation. Looking at them as a set, it’s nearly impossible to tell which works are high-fidelity recreations of back office printer mishaps, and which are born of Shelton’s own imagination. Collectively, the works in Snack Aisle are a mix of hard facts and fuzzy memories; of dreamy pop iconography and pragmatic market-driven aesthetics. They look great.
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Miles Shelton (b. 1988, Brooklyn, New York) is an artist living in New York City. Shelton received his B.F.A. from SUNY Purchase College, and has previously exhibited at Leftfield Gallery, Los Osos, CA (2021), East Hampton Shed, East Hampton, NY (2020), La Mama Galleria, New York, NY, and Triumph Gallery, Moscow, Russia (2016).
About Permanent Collection
Permanent Collection is a series of exhibits about things found, how they were found, and how what was found is shared. The first was held on September 19, 2012 in Brooklyn, New York at PACS Gallery and featured artworks artists had purchased, acquired in trade, or found in the trash. Ten years later, the project continues at an independent bookstore in Providence, Rhode Island.
Thank you to this exhibition’s partners:
Paper Nautilus Books
Gallery Night Providence
Dye House
The Classic
Hudson Street Deli