Curatorial statement: Better Late Than Never

“Now, Mr Mutt’s Fountain is not immoral, that is absurd, no more than a bathtub is immoral. It is a fixture that you see every day in plumbers’ show windows. Whether Mr Mutt with his own hands made the Fountain or not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappears under the new title and point of view – created a new thought for the object.” 

–Beatrice Wood, H.P. Roché and/or Marcel Duchamp.

Amidst the turbulence of world events in the closing month of 2019, a burst of laughter could be heard from Art Basel, Miami Beach. At the center of this cause célèbre? The conceptual art piece, Comedian (2019) by the satirical Italian artist, Maurizo Cattelan. Consisting of a thirty cents grocery store banana taped to a wall with grey duct tape, the exorbitant price tag of $120,000 USD (and thereafter $150,000 USD) belied the seemingly simplistic piece. Considering the year it supposedly took to conceptualise the material used, shape of the fruit and the angle of the tape, the decision to “let the banana manifest itself” was a serious and intentional one. Notwithstanding the many parodies that have sprung up in mainstream advertising and amongst other artists, this vaudevillian reference unpeels its own farcical skin to reveal the flesh of theories of art and the ecosystem surrounding it. 

Duchampian in nature, both sides have been laid bare. The work cannot be viewed as a standalone separate from the artist’s oeuvre, the history of works done before, the environs of art fairs and the consequences evoked upon those who would not ordinarily take a second glance at “art”. Nor should it be viewed outside of the context of food poverty and social inequality. 

Contemporary art has done it again! It’s just bananas! Or is it? 

The artworks in this exhibition may look like or utilise ordinary objects, but they are singular in their attempt to question social “realities” and offer both validation and invalidation to existing constructs of knowledge. They are calling the audience to be mindful, imaginative and open to considering the infinite possibilities of what we see around us and the invisible links between say, bananas and art history; bananas and the political system of South America; bananas and their critique on just about anything we can stretch our imagination to think of. 

Artnvoid 

24 March 2020