Discarded carpeting from New York art fair, ice from coconut water
20' x 45' x .5'
Interested in the history of spiritual art objects, I visited the Met Cloisters while working as a production assistant for a New York art show. In the Cloisters I saw these huge castle medieval doors hinged with ornate iron casts, with scripture written within the frame of each hinge. Working at the fair and thinking about ancient scripture, it was hard not to think about what it means to do something in vain. To act in vain, is to do something ineffectual or to do something with conceit. I saw a very commercial side to art that is often producing in vain. The spectacle of an art fair, where warehouses on piers are gussied, walled, and carpeted to display a pristine atmosphere most apt for selling art to an elite market, where champagne and coconut water sponsors deliver gallons of free product to VIP guests, buying million dollar art works made by some who are in comparison paid pennies for educating in the arts, all as being done in vain. Taking discarded carpet from the fair, I lined an intersection of an old chapel, where I was apart of my Capstone exhibition. This space to me was the site of an intersection of spiritual authority and arts business, much like the objects held in the Met Cloisters. In hinges made of coconut water ice, I wrote the text “In Vain”/ “I Collect”/ “In Vain”/ “I Possess”/ “In Vain I Criticize”/ To make work with the aim of being a successful artist where I can one day show work that is apart of a market I disagree with, is why my criticality is in vain. The Met Cloisters collection is a very telling collection for the value of spiritual art objects. Working in the commercial art world for various billion-dollar-grossing, New York art fairs, I am interested in the spectacle of collection. I see the dealing and creation of works for investing collectors as existing in a realm of vanity. I see mega-institutions like The Met as hoarders of artifacts, in vain. In avoidance of the conflict of possession in this work, the sculptures melt throughout the opening, leaving only vanishing watermarks in the carpet.