May 30, 2024
MSCHF
Art 2
Perrotin
April 6 - June 1, 2024
MSCHF
Quotation. Appropriation. Art about art. Using the works of others as a point of departure is hardly new. Throughout art history, artists have borrowed from, modified, erased and even copied pieces verbatim as homages or critiques. The list is long and includes a wide range of approaches. For example, Yasumasa Morimura and Cindy Sherman re-staged famous paintings as photographs, while Rachel Lachowicz, Deborah Kass and Elaine Reicheck have replicated works by their more famous male counterparts, often infusing them with a feminist agenda. The Brooklyn, NY collective MSCHF is a somewhat new addition to this diverse group of artists and while their work is as much about consumerism and consumer culture as it is about art, they play around the idea of readymades.
Coincidently, at the same time MSCHF is exhibiting works at Perrotin, pieces by Elaine Sturtevant (1924-2014) are on view at Matthew Marks Gallery. Throughout her long career, Sturtevant produced copies of works by well known artists to challenge ideas of originality and in the current exhibition, there are exacting recreations of famous works by Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Jasper Johns and Felix Gonzalez-Torres, as well as The Dark Threat of Absence (2002) where Sturtevant reproduced the jarring video by Paul McCarthy.
MSCHF's approach is more sardonic and tongue-and-cheek as they toy with art history and high and low cultures. While many of their projects are also commodities available at their online store, they are quite serious about their gallery presentations. This installation includes 249 reproductions of Pablo Picasso's tiny carved wooden sculpture, Le Poisson presented as a large grid on the wall like a choreographed school of fish. Titled Possible Real Copy Of Poisson By Pablo Picasso (all works 2024) this piece does contain one Picasso original. In another series based on the book Animorphs, MSCHF creates oil paintings where a classical sculpture transitions to a contemporary work as illustrated in JaguarKourosDavidCowBoyMan. Against a blurred landscape, the painting shows various Kouros sculptures that morph into Michelangelo's David and finally into Takashi Murakami's My lonesome cowboy. A similar transition occurs in Murakillendorf's Venus. Outlined in yellow, the painted reproductions morph from the Venus of Willendorf to Murakami's large busted sculpture Hiropon.
In the Botched Masters series, MSCHF starts with found 17th and 18th century religious paintings. They recklessly paint over these (possibly) valuable oils, obscuring faces and turning figures like Mary and Jesus into cartoon blobs, in essence destroying the original while creating new value. In AirBnB (Botched L'Adoration des Bergers), they cancel out the haloed Mary and replace her with an incongruous representation. Similarly, in Flower Boy (Botched Portrait de jeune garçon à la guirlande de fleurs), they obscure an 18th Century depiction of a young boy with a crudely painted and modernized rendition. These works are horrifying and humorous simultaneously.
Another art about art reference is Touch Me Sculpture One More Time, a large free standing sculpture in which bronze bodies in the style of Michelangelo and Bernini are entangled together on top of a pentagonal shaped white pedestal with an illuminated LED display with an ambiguous numerical readout. Bullets Fired Into A Wall By A US Veteran recalls Chris Burden's Shoot, and Met's Sink Of Theseus calls to mind both Duchamp's Urinal and Maurizio Cattelan's gold-plated toilet America, (2016) installed in a restroom at the Guggenheim Museum and later stolen from the Blenheim Palace and reportedly melted down.
Scattered throughout the exhibit are colorful Bootlegs, cartoony sculptures based on the boots worn by Astro Boy (a 1960s Japanese cartoon). Like disembodied figures situated randomly across the gallery, these over-sized resin boots sprout ungainly hairy legs. MSCHF's works are all about camp. They are ironic and seductive while in the know about contemporary art and popular culture. They also strive to challenge accepted norms about the art marketplace and conventions of art connoisseurship and consumption. The exhibition asks viewers to think about craft and digital culture, as well as expanded boundaries of what is accepted or acceptable for artists and for galleries.
Art 2
Perrotin
April 6 - June 1, 2024
MSCHF
Quotation. Appropriation. Art about art. Using the works of others as a point of departure is hardly new. Throughout art history, artists have borrowed from, modified, erased and even copied pieces verbatim as homages or critiques. The list is long and includes a wide range of approaches. For example, Yasumasa Morimura and Cindy Sherman re-staged famous paintings as photographs, while Rachel Lachowicz, Deborah Kass and Elaine Reicheck have replicated works by their more famous male counterparts, often infusing them with a feminist agenda. The Brooklyn, NY collective MSCHF is a somewhat new addition to this diverse group of artists and while their work is as much about consumerism and consumer culture as it is about art, they play around the idea of readymades.
Coincidently, at the same time MSCHF is exhibiting works at Perrotin, pieces by Elaine Sturtevant (1924-2014) are on view at Matthew Marks Gallery. Throughout her long career, Sturtevant produced copies of works by well known artists to challenge ideas of originality and in the current exhibition, there are exacting recreations of famous works by Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Jasper Johns and Felix Gonzalez-Torres, as well as The Dark Threat of Absence (2002) where Sturtevant reproduced the jarring video by Paul McCarthy.
MSCHF's approach is more sardonic and tongue-and-cheek as they toy with art history and high and low cultures. While many of their projects are also commodities available at their online store, they are quite serious about their gallery presentations. This installation includes 249 reproductions of Pablo Picasso's tiny carved wooden sculpture, Le Poisson presented as a large grid on the wall like a choreographed school of fish. Titled Possible Real Copy Of Poisson By Pablo Picasso (all works 2024) this piece does contain one Picasso original. In another series based on the book Animorphs, MSCHF creates oil paintings where a classical sculpture transitions to a contemporary work as illustrated in JaguarKourosDavidCowBoyMan. Against a blurred landscape, the painting shows various Kouros sculptures that morph into Michelangelo's David and finally into Takashi Murakami's My lonesome cowboy. A similar transition occurs in Murakillendorf's Venus. Outlined in yellow, the painted reproductions morph from the Venus of Willendorf to Murakami's large busted sculpture Hiropon.
In the Botched Masters series, MSCHF starts with found 17th and 18th century religious paintings. They recklessly paint over these (possibly) valuable oils, obscuring faces and turning figures like Mary and Jesus into cartoon blobs, in essence destroying the original while creating new value. In AirBnB (Botched L'Adoration des Bergers), they cancel out the haloed Mary and replace her with an incongruous representation. Similarly, in Flower Boy (Botched Portrait de jeune garçon à la guirlande de fleurs), they obscure an 18th Century depiction of a young boy with a crudely painted and modernized rendition. These works are horrifying and humorous simultaneously.
Another art about art reference is Touch Me Sculpture One More Time, a large free standing sculpture in which bronze bodies in the style of Michelangelo and Bernini are entangled together on top of a pentagonal shaped white pedestal with an illuminated LED display with an ambiguous numerical readout. Bullets Fired Into A Wall By A US Veteran recalls Chris Burden's Shoot, and Met's Sink Of Theseus calls to mind both Duchamp's Urinal and Maurizio Cattelan's gold-plated toilet America, (2016) installed in a restroom at the Guggenheim Museum and later stolen from the Blenheim Palace and reportedly melted down.
Scattered throughout the exhibit are colorful Bootlegs, cartoony sculptures based on the boots worn by Astro Boy (a 1960s Japanese cartoon). Like disembodied figures situated randomly across the gallery, these over-sized resin boots sprout ungainly hairy legs. MSCHF's works are all about camp. They are ironic and seductive while in the know about contemporary art and popular culture. They also strive to challenge accepted norms about the art marketplace and conventions of art connoisseurship and consumption. The exhibition asks viewers to think about craft and digital culture, as well as expanded boundaries of what is accepted or acceptable for artists and for galleries.