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 in an atmosphere with highly priced fine art and thinking about collected 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 feels often produced in vain. The spectacle of an art fair, where warehouses are gussied, walled, and carpeted to display a pristine atmosphere most apt for selling art to an elite collector’s 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 poorly compensated for educating in the arts, all felt like an unholy ritual. Taking discarded carpet from the fair, I lined an intersection of an old chapel-turned-community space where a small art exhibition was held. 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 molded 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 profitting artist, where I can one day show work that is a part of a market I disagree with, is why criticality is included in the vainity. Working in the commercial art world for various billion-dollar-grossing, New York art fairs, I am interested in the spectacle of collection. The Met Cloisters collection feels like the institutional spectacle of spiritual art objects, hoarding a collection of artifacts. The ice was chosen to avoid the conflict of possession, as the sculptures melt throughout the opening, leaving only near vanishing watermarks in the carpet by the end of the evening.