Ilmur Stefánsdóttir's Artistic Merchandise Quality.
Most people who view Ilmur Stefánsdóttir's art take it for granted that her choice of subject is rather capricious and based, more than anything else, on her direct and not very considered responses to the consumer society and the inherent object worship of our time. On closer scrutiny, however, her ideas are seen to be more deep-rooted. They can be traced all the way back to the origin of Dada and the criticism of certain of the its instigators of our attitude to the environment and the objects around us. In this sense we can claim that Ilmur Stefánsdóttir is the legitimate offspring of Marcel Duchamp and his ready-mades from the second decade of the last century.
In other words we can discern a considerably close relationship between Ilmur Stefánsdóttir's art and Duchamp's three-dimensional works, such as Bicycle Wheel (1913), Bottle Rack (1914), and the snow-shovel, In Advance of the Broken Arm (1915), even though the art of the two is separated by nine decades. In all three works ordinary, practical objects are taken from their sensible context and transported to another area of meaning.
The difference, however, is also decisive. While Duchamp chose merchandise of different origin to transport from an everyday environment of goods and business to the protected special world of art, Ilmur Stefánsdóttir seems to enhance the sacrificial value - the fetish value - of her art, so that it will seduce the consumer even more than the ordinary merchandise did. The optical fibre connection, which has become a kind of trade-mark for her, seems to have the main purpose of luring the viewer so that his weakness for the merchandise will be even greater. Thus, a rather cheap hat resembles a magic hat more than anything else when its been fitted with an optical fibre connection and ordinary swimming goggles assume, it seems, a mysterious extra value when inlaid with a net of constantly flowing optical fibre connections.
When Walter Benjamin considered Charles Baudelaire's life on the streets of Paris around the middle of the 19th century, he realised the competition that the modern artist was subjected to and was evident in all the tantalising merchandise that the shops of the young bourgeois society had to offer. How could modern artists compete with all the glory that the poet's eyes beheld in the shop windows of roofed shopping streets but by somehow topping it's temptation?
About a hundred years after Baudelaire did his window-shopping in 19th century Paris the critic and semiotics specialist Roland Barthes began considering the reality behind the merchandise. He made do with no less than writing an entire book about fashion and the system around it. At the time he had already pointed out how palpable objects appear to us as semi-divine. Much more than spiritual or invisible phenomena, ready-made objects seem like heaven sent, just like spaceships that have forced their way into our lives. An object made in a factory is somehow without a defined origin. Hence it is entirely impeccable. It transforms existence into material things and palpable objects are more magical than steam-boiled existence, according to most people. Barthes was the first to assert that in modern society objects were no longer essential for keeping us alive, they were only essential as status symbols.
It is precisely on this long and historical foundation that Ilmur Stefánsdóttir launches her enchanting art. She knows that should you need sports shoes nothing less than Nike or Adidas will do. Otherwise sports are best left alone and you should concentrate on other things. In other words, it is the label of the merchandise and not its potential use that glorifies it in modern society. Thus the gap between works of art and merchant labels has become considerably shorter. It is precisely in the light of the merchant label as status symbol that Ilmur Stafánsdóttir sneaks her enchanting, unnecessary art upon us. Has art not always been unnecessary anyway?
And Ilmur Stefánsdóttir revels in the language of advertisement as it manifests itself so forcefully in the age of plenty. If she pokes fun at all the talk about the necessity of certain objects it is because she knows how unnecessary they are. Her paradoxical art, which frequently assumes the guise of merchandise, proves totally useless even though it may seem to be a revolutionary and essential invention. Barthes soon realised that the surplus of advertisement connected with the various familiar brands of detergent stemmed from the fact that there was practically no difference between the various products. The less unique the product the greater campaign seems to be made for its name.
This is the foundation of irony apparent in all the enchanting products that Ilmur Stefánsdóttir introduces. If she can be blamed for creating objects which have no practical use she easily defends herself by the fact that such an ideal has long been obsolete in a world where merchandise is above all a status symbol. The same may be said of contemporary art. Its intrinsic value is discernible in the fact of its secure position as a status symbol. Other aspects are overshadowed by that value. This is why Ilmur Stefánsdóttir places so much worth on the enchanting appearance of her art. She knows that she is in fierce competition with any other produced unnecessary item.
Halldór Björn Runólfsson. |
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