SMUGGLE (1989) The work Smuggle succeeded in
seducing die-hard businessmen to exchange a
(artistic) concept for expensive goods. It all
started when I was invited to make a work for an
art gallery that found residence in a building
across the stock exchange building in Holland and
from whom its participants had offices in that
building. The economical system is based on an idea
of a circular closed system in which goods and
values exchange. But nonetheless even in the times
of Aristotle’s one found out that somewhere in this
closed system something starts to 'leak' and
endanger its circularity. I've followed such a
trace by changing the good-value circulation for
another more symbolic one: a concept-value
exchange.
After weeks of appearing in different meetings the
plan got accepted and the factory was so kind to
give me their old wooden hangers instead of the
then current plastic ones. It was all hung up in a
shape that's something in-between a sculpture and a
wardrobe hallstand. Because of the image that all
these businessmen look like club members I
paraphrased the member signs by putting on the
letters that form the word smuggle. Smuggling
different hidden connotations in given symbolic
systems: art into the realm of economy and the
notion of circularity through using the form of
economy into the artistic system. Both of them are
now -beyond Romanticism- mutually disseminated
forever.
Specifications
Dimensions: 9.00m. by 0.80m. Material: Aluminium
box letters, high quality acrylate.
Exhibited: Die Zunge am Eis, Nova Zembla, Den Bosch, Holland (1990).
Exhibited: Die Zunge am Eis, Nova Zembla, Den Bosch, Holland (1990).