Buscando precios [Searching for Prices]

This work was originally commissioned for the grocery store El Tigre (The Tiger), which is located in San Nicolás, a small city five hundred miles inland from Buenos Aires. Local products, the city hall, and the main church of San Nicolás flank the central animal figure. The consumer goods pictured throughout allude both to the grocery store’s advertisements and reproductions of manufactured objects by Pop artist Andy Warhol. Characteristic of Laren’s technique, this work combines holographic paper, acrylic paint, and a variety of glittering elements placed on the back of the glass pane. The artist removed the work from the store in 1991 (at the owner’s request) and transported it to the Argentine Consulate in New York City. Before the artist donated Searching for Prices to the Blanton Museum of Art, it remained in New York, virtually out of view, for more than fifteen years.