Deboned

What happens to a brand when it’s debranded?

Trying to fathom the life of a shopping mall is like trying to understand the meaning of a fish bowl. Granted my gallery has opened at the most exclusive mall in town, but that doesn’t mean easy times as an artist. It just makes the challenge all the more respectable.

Life is full of contradictions. The most sought-after artworks are by dead people, while living artists often have to beg. Collectors amass works from a time they cannot begin to understand; and what they understand today they fear the most. That’s why I hope the exhibition Calculus of Joy works in a place where contemporary dreams are made and traded: namely, the shopping mall.

The whole exhibition is like a kind of conceptual installation. We invite you to come and see how art can simultaneously disrupt and enhance your consumer experience. When visitors arrive they immediately try to fathom why this shop is different. Then slowly, as they look around they begin to get it: it’s an exhibition. Not a shop, not an interior décor emporium, but a real experience of visual and meaningful coherence.

I have tried to create a cohesion that asks what happens to a brand when it is de-branded. What happens when the thing you know so well – like the mall itself — is suddenly functioning somewhat differently?

It’s like coming out of the dark and into the light. At first there’s a shock, and then slowly your eyes adjust to the composition around you. And then you see where you are, and you can plot your next move. The exhibition itself says that art is not one single item, but a journey through time, and that time is the universal present. I think that’s why people love it