The Real Deal
Curated by conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan, ‘The Artist is Present’ walks the line between real and “copy”, and breaks down the limits of imitation in fashion. Here, the artist talks about his visual odyssey with Alessandro Michele and the contentious dynamics of originality and reproduction. By Emmilyn Yeoh.
Is originality overrated? When it comes to creative pursuits, it’s a question as old as time, running the gamut of realms, from art to fashion. But trust Alessandro Michele, the visionary creative director of Gucci, to build his universe at the Italian fashion house with rich layers of characters and iconoclasts; he who dreams up mythological baby dragons, ancient Roman marble heads, and gold reliquaries. To Michele, propogating a provocative world of fashion and building a discourse on the importance of the role of society and consumerism, is inevitable, especially when his vivid imagination is combined with that of artistprovocateur Maurizio Cattelan, whose satirical work questions social norms. Cattelan’s irreverence takes him on quests through curious alleys in Shanghai, where values of “originality” and “intention” are taken apart, giving way to new perspectives on the act of imitation.
The result is ‘The Artist is Present’, an exhibition curated by Cattelan himself and staged in the Chinese metropolis, a location chosen for its famed notoriety of producing red-hot counterfeit luxury items. ‘The Artist is Present’ explores the relationship between illusion and reality, representation and presentation, in modern art. Focusing on artist projects that suggest copy and imitation as paradigms of global culture, the exhibition is a looking glass into how originality can be achieved through repetition, and how originals can be preserved through copies. How did this collaboration with Alessandro Michele come about? We come from very diverse backgrounds and modes of creation. I find fashion fascinating for its double nature. On one hand, it’s a really advanced industry and economic system, involving so many people in the production chain;
on the other, it seems to be depending on one person, which is the creative director. He or she has to make rapid and instinctual choices. I work in a completely different way. I prefer not to have anyone bound to me or my inspiration, and that’s why I’ve always avoided having a studio. Alessandro and I are both fascinated by the overlap between these two different methods of being creative, and if it’s true that opposites attract, I promise our collaboration is working. How do your respective visions intersect and what parallels have you discovered in the process? He works on iconography, I work on icons. The etymology is the same. We both adopt the language of images, a territory that everyone has the skills to explore because no alphabet is involved. At the same time, no one will get the same sensation and experience as his or her travel mate. Both Alessandro’s and my job are to pull meaning from this reign of the subjective interpretation and to make our products significant for more than one season. Can you explain the dynamics between creation, appropriation, copy, and authorship? What are the boundaries between original and copy? It’s a concept as old as humanity itself. Copying has to do with the transmission and diffusion of knowledge, both to your contemporaries and to future artists. Ancient Romans endlessly copied the classical Greek statues, because they wanted to make it possible for everyone, from the senator to the blacksmith, to admire them. More recently, we’ve been through years where private property, and then copyrighting, have been such an essential principle against other ideologies, that we now fail to recognise the value of the act of copying. The rise of the sharing economy, from the age of Napster, seems to be a redemption for this situation, and to reconsider copying as an esteemed declaration, if not a romantic one. My newsagent says: “Start copying what you love. Copy, copy, copy, copy. At the end of the copy, you will find yourself.” How do the works in the exhibition support that theme? Every work has a different relationship with the concept of copying. To me, it was important to witness the most comprehensive range of art reproduction and appropriation possible. There will be repeated actions, identity exchanges, copies of portraits, and masterpieces from the past reproduced in a smaller scale. From time to time, it might be difficult for the audience to retrace how the works are linked to the original concept, but I conceive exhibitions as a visual organism that makes sense as a whole. Which artwork within ‘The Artist is Present’ stands out to you the most? It’s hard to say. As a parent, you have your favourite son, but it’s a secret that you won’t even admit to yourself. In my opinion, the best works are done under a moment of urgency. They are all the transformation of a personal emergency into a public act. Those have the quality to be significant in the future, and that’s the secret to telling a masterpiece apart from a “market piece.” What do you hope the viewers will take away from this intriguing exhibition? I’m rather old-school, with a mindset that the moment an artist completes his work, it’s no longer his. I see what people make of it, and the same applies with an artist-curated exhibition. My hope for this exhibition is to find a way to make it travel to the West. It would be very relevant to possibly compare and contrast the feedback on the issue of “copy” by audiences from such a culturally diverse part of the world. ‘The Artist is Present’ is from October 11 until December 16 at Yuz Museum, Shanghai, China. www.yuzmshanghai.org