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In 2009, for the Frieze art fair
I was commissioned to do a special project.
What I wound up doing was a, essentially starting a counterfeiting site.
In the Frieze art fair, I hired a group of 5 young artists
to bootleg and counterfeit other art works found in other gallery booths.
And that production site was setup directly in front of the viewing audience so that
people were able to watch the counterfeiting in action,
and as the objects were finished they were moved directly into
an adjacent gallery space and we sold all the works
at an incredibly discounted rate.
So in a way we were kind of like the bargain bin
of the high end Frieze art fair.
and we became a really interesting kind of landing place for people
who wanted to you know, talk about issues, both
art and commodity value and the kind of frenzy
of the art market in fair context.
So, you know for the period of 5 days it was an ongoing performance of events.
In which we had to field about 50000 visitors to the fair
and deal with them on both a conceptual level, you know discussing our ideas
and hawking these products that were obviously knock-offs of really well known piece just down the way!
And you know, just try to negotiate with the visitors
what their value system was in relationship to what we had to offer.
the same curator who curated me into Frieze projects
actually worked with me for the PS1 exhibition
and one of the problems was that NY MOMA
would not lend PS1 some of their more famous art works
either due to climate control issues or insurance issues,
so they asked me to step in and in a sense
create proxies for the works.
I was given a selection of things and I chose 2 very specific ones that
I felt I had a kind of personal relationship to
because at the same time I'm also not a counterfeiter on demand,
like I'd really like to have a dialogue with these works.
So, one of the ones I chose was Joseph Beuys' sled,
very iconic piece, it's a very simple work.
It's consists of 5 objects grouped together,
that's a wooden german sled, a wool blanket,
a hunk of lard, white leather strapping
and a flashlight.
So I realized that I could go out and buy these things,
they're not very hard to find but
that didn't seem to make sense so I sent out an email
and a facebook blast to my extended network of friends to see if they
could help me in loaning PS1 a Joseph Beuys piece
and did anyone have a sled, blanket, hunk of lard etc.
and I was amazed because I got back a kind of torrent
of responses, it seemed like everybody
had atleast one of these things and was willing to contribute.
so I had them all directly send the components to PS1 and
then I assembled a kind of inventory on the floor
and put together a grouping that was the most avocative
of the Joseph Beuys work.
From there what was interesting was,
people did not realize that it wasn't the real work.
That to me was interesting because the slippage of the real object
that has the aura of the Beuys
and then this contemporary re-creation that is based on
a whole different logic structure you know,
which is sort of like this social network
to create this new piece.
In a way I felt that, that would hopefully do a Beuys work justice,
because I was also trying to bring out his issue of
community involvement and you know, social conversation in art work.
And then, the second project for PS1 I chose
a Robert Morris felt cut out piece.
Which is again very iconic and people can recognize from a distance
But my logic structure was also different in that,
I had an American moving blanket factory fabricate
a Morris in the exact shape and size.
And then we actually utilized that moving blanket
to ship works from MOMA to PS1.
So the install crew actually used that blanket to wrap
Richard Serra art works and
Robert Irwin pieces and all sorts of other
"real art works"
And when we got the blanket to PS1 we hung it in the exact shape
of Morris, so it bore the markings of use and
it bore the kind of labor that went through
you know the transit route.
What was interesting was that people would come to the
exhibition and have no idea that it was my work.
Because for all intents and purposes, it looks like the real thing.
So, what I liked about that was maybe it brought up
a little bit of the, I don't wanna say subversive
but a slightly under the radar level of dialogue,
which I think is you know, a very rich way of working.
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