[shop, webshop, changing dimensions, 2015-2016.]
The total commercialization of art quite openly manifests itself in the gift shop of museums, this strange appendix of the institutional system of art: “high” and “low” culture marries here, artworks become textile prints and even those can take home a part of the artwork who would never be able to possess something like that. Its intentions are clear and honest: it does not conceal its commercial purpose, it does not try to act like it would be able to avoid becoming a marketable product (as against an artwork, for instance.) Furthermore, the products offered by museum shops confirm the loss of aura of the artwork in the Benjaminian sense.
For its symbol-creating power, for its might of summing up these concepts I chose the museum shop (as phenomenon) as subject of my diploma project, thus it bequeaths some of it attributions to my work as well:
On one hand, it does not intend to act like it would be able to back out of consumer society and exist as “art as art”, what is more, it exists as “product as product”.
However, it should be interpreted as an artwork, because each object found in the shop is numbered, limited edition original, “multiplica” with a certificate. The numbering propose questions on multiplication and multiplicability, a part of the work can be possessed by anyone, but the whole not.
The “B_R_CS_Y T_R_M©” as a shop was functioning during the diploma exhibition of Graphic Arts Department of Hungarian University of Fine Arts in June 2016., the related web shop operated until January 2017.
vidrareka.com 