Early this year, Parisian Galerie J\u00e9r\u00f4me de Noirmont presented the recent works of the artist duo Pierre et Gilles, a new series of large-scale painted photographs.5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 5 <\/a> - Pierre et Gilles, \u201cWonderful Town,\u201d exhibition presented at Galerie J\u00e9r\u00f4me de Noirmont, Paris, 27 November \u2013 23 January 2010.<\/span> Their \u201cWonderful Town\u201d exhibit offers a dreamlike trajectory in which characters and moods at the confluence of the sublime and the terrifying are set against a postindustrial decor\u2009\u2014\u2009schizophrenic and apocalyptic cityscapes,6<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 6 <\/a> - See Courrier international<\/em>, No. 998-999 (December 17-31, 2009): issue devoted to prophesies, apocalypses, and the end of the world.<\/span> office and residential buildings, abandoned factories and ranged construction cranes. The oases of dream and fantasy, nests of imagination and sublime kitsch, sparkle on the dull backdrop of the civilized world\u2019s arid debris like colourful sequins and garlands \u00adfluttering in a cloud of smoke. In this spectacular image, an image created from the extreme, even saturated accumulation of capital (the image in which Modern Times has placed its trust),7<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 7 <\/a> - \u201cSpectacle is capital<\/em> to such a degree of saturation that it becomes an image\u201d (\u201cLe spectacle est le capital<\/em> \u00e0 un tel degr\u00e9 d\u2019accumulation qu\u2019il devient image.\u201d), Guy Debord, La Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 du Spectacle<\/em> (Paris: Gallimard-Folio, 1992), 32.<\/span> the only means of escape is a hopeful dream that can match any deep religious faith or its ecstatic and sacred mise-en-sc\u00e8ne. Bling-bling is a hard version of the spectacular image, its transformation into an icon<\/em>. Art is here the imperturbable extension of Creation, in all its metaphysical and spiritual dimensions: more than ever, the contemporary art gallery exudes a presence, \u201cpossessed by other spaces where conventions are preserved through the repetition of a closed system of values… some of the sanctity of the Church.\u201d8<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 8 <\/a> - Brian O\u2019Doherty, Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space<\/em> (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999), 14.<\/span> As closed and redundant a system as that proposed by Boris Archour, who stood in front of luxury boutiques in Paris wearing a vest on which he had sewn the phrase: \u201cLes femmes riches sont belles\u201d (\u201crich women are beautiful,\u201d Les femmes riches sont belles<\/em>, 1996).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Inspiration for these painted photos came from a trip the duo made to Japan, travelling through inhuman cities where people were \u201cobliged\u201d to invent a world of pleasure, dream and joy in order to escape an untenable reality. Here again, the contemporary megalopolis, the world-city, is a flashing jewel of exuberance in a geopolitical environment undermined by both visible and invisible conflicts, wars of interests and power, and, especially, by hordes of increasingly poor individuals suffering ever-more intense violence. As the joint authors of Evil Paradises<\/em> point out,9<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 9 <\/a> - Davis and Monk, eds., op. cit.<\/em><\/span> luxury is truly a refuge in which a privileged minority prefer self-segregation to a world that is devolving into meaninglessness. The accumulation of individual \u00adegotisms and fears often translates into an architectural and urban spectacle. Artificial worlds, like that of Hong Kong\u2019s California, the gated communities scattered throughout the U.S., shopping centres where gargantuan sumptuousness replaces ordinary reality with a commercial reality transfixed by the rhythms of desires and the fetishization of attitudes and values. A Prada boutique isolated in the middle of the Texas desert, emblematic of the work of artists Elmgreen and Dragset (Prada Marfa<\/em>, 2007), reproduces on smaller scale the play of exacerbated veneration exercised in \u00adcontemplating the new edifices of ruling societies… like a little Dubai.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This luxury store could very well have been a contemporary art space (from which it borrows the formal vocabulary). Whether it consists of a boutique in the middle of the desert, a furnished Venetian pavilion (The Collectors<\/em>, 2009), or a sunken white cube (Traces of a Never Existing History\/Powerless Structures, Fig. 222<\/em>, 2001), the structures these northern \u00adartists create remain fixed in a white, luminous aura, the diffuse and most efficient mechanism of the prevailing egalitarianism and standardization. Because our culture needs to define the forms that constitute the art that we look at, and, at the same time, because these forms are no longer visually defined and categorized, the gallery becomes the sublimated \u00adcontainer on which our habits of critical thought coalesce. The \u201cglobal white cube\u201d10<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 10 <\/a> - The expression is borrowed from Elena Filipovic\u2019s essay, \u201cThe Global White Cube,\u201d published in Barbara Vanderlinden and Elena Filipovic, eds., The Manifesta Decade: Debates on Contemporary Art Exhibitions and Biennials in Post-Wall Europe<\/em> (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005), 63-83.<\/span> remains the worldwide standard that governs the exhibition of \u00adever-more varied, revamped, and exotic practices. Bling-bling comes about when structures supplant the identities they are supposed to convey: \u00adcosmopolitan art, the expression of the plurality of singular identities in the world, is confronted with predefined and designated modes of \u00adappearance and existence, echoed in both established and alternative venues, here too as the \u201c\u00adsurplus\u201d of industrial infrastructures and often giving their original name to the areas prepared for exhibition. Slaughterhouses, hangars, docks, \u00adgarages, stores, halls, and what-not are as transformed by \u201c\u00adaesthetic tuning\u201d as the roaring cars in Fast and Furious<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Customized<\/em> is also the Hallal-brand bling-bling garment and accessory collection that artist Kader Attia launched in 2004. For several weeks, Galerie Kamel Mennour was transformed into a hip street wear boutique whose large window displays showcased the representation of an entire culture under the yoke of western branding strategies.11<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 11 <\/a> - Hallal<\/em>, 27 February \u2013 27 March 2004, Galerie Kamel Mennour, Paris.<\/span> These fetishized objects and attitudes flaunted by such black rappers as Lil Wayne and Juvenile in their aptly named clip, Bling-bling<\/em>, like the luxury cars and yachts, the grillz<\/em>,12<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 12 <\/a> - Decorative dental caps made of precious metals.<\/span> the dream villas, the tattoos, the jewels, and the women, simultaneously express a libertarian revolt and the imprisonment of the identity of entire communities within the confines of Western civilization\u2019s most tenacious codes, where material values replace moral ones. The work of American visual artist David Hammons also illustrates these tensions between the possessing and the dispossessed; many of his works blend American and African cultural signs and registers, like the broken piggy bank that spills out to reveal an economy based on seashells (Too Obvious<\/em>, 1996). Young rappers\u2019 still-born bling-bling revolt leaves as its sole image that of an identity straddling extreme wealth and the most dire poverty, where the slimmest chance of survival is relegated to the miraculous, like immigrants crossing oceans in makeshift canoes in search of the promised land. Freedom is presented as a total package by the aesthetized structures of its commercial distribution, as witnesses the mercantile cynicism of mob-like organizations that sell American, and sometimes European resident status to the people of Africa and the Far East.13<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 13 <\/a> - One may cite the work of the group Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 R\u00e9aliste, created in Paris, in 2004. Their \u201cgreen card\u201d lottery (EU Green Card Lottery \u2013 The Lagos File, 2006-2009<\/em>) is a major \u00adproject studying international immigration: www.green-card-lottery-eu.org.<\/span> In such contexts, human destiny is smothered in scintillating and pricey dross, like Damien Hirst\u2019s diamond-crusted vanitas<\/em> entitled For the Love of God<\/em> (2007).<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Sylvie Fleury\u2019s work, one comes across gold shopping carts mounted on white pedestals (Ela 75K (Go Pout)<\/em>, 2000), clusters of luxury brand bags (It\u2019s Clinique Bonus Time<\/em>, 1991), Vogue<\/em> magazine covers (Vogue<\/em>, 1992), and citations of emblematic works of the twentieth century \u00adcovered in industrial ointments or gaudy furs (Eternal Wow on Shelf<\/em>, 2007). All these containers reveal the forms of fashion, advertising and aesthetics with which our identities are now constructed. \u201cI am a woman, I live in this century, I am a feminist\u201d is the characteristic title of an interview the artist gave Fabian Stech in 2003 in Geneva.14<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 14 <\/a> - Fabian Stech, J\u2019ai parl\u00e9 avec…<\/em> (Dijon: Les Presses du R\u00e9el, 2007), 37-49.<\/span> Bling-bling distils the most profound interrogations on the essence of being human along with the most \u00adfrivolous desires for representing<\/em> this humanity. Like the paper of a shopping bag, it is an interface that displays the inner world on its outside. We know that this mystic and religious enquiry is one of the driving forces in the process of mass consumption. As French billionaire G\u00e9rard Mulliez, founder of a world distribution empire, said: \u201cConsumer society is an economic system that aims to place more and more goods in the hands of more and more people. A whole organization whose only goal is to have more and more people participate in creation, in direct line with the will of our Lord.\u201d15<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 15 <\/a> - Richard Whiteley, La dynamique du client, une r\u00e9volution des services<\/em>, with an \u00adintroduction and comments by G\u00e9rard Mulliez (Paris: \u00c9ditions Maxima, 1994), 23.<\/span> Val\u00e9rie Belin\u2019s photographs of made-up plastic mannequins and Vanessa Beecroft\u2019s motionless mannequins of flesh and blood have the disconcerting appearance and distant look of sacred Byzantine icons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Pareto principle,16<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 16 <\/a> - The Pareto principle, or law, is a mathematical and empirical principle that states that, in all human activity, 80% of the effects are due to 20% of the causes. The principle is nearly universally accepted in the commercial field.<\/span> which finds varied applications throughout the market economy and the media, governs the choices and actions of decision-makers. It takes on uncontrollable proportions when it is applied globally in a system where \u201ctechnical progress supersedes human progress.\u201d17<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 17 <\/a> - See Conversation Hans Ulrich Obrist-Raoul Vaneigem<\/em> (Paris: Manuella, 2009), 20 [in English: Hans Ulrich Obrist, \u201cIn Conversation with Raoul Vaneigem,\u201d translated by Eric Angl\u00e8s, e-flux<\/em> , online at http:\/\/www.e-flux.com\/journal\/view\/62.]<\/span> All around Bling-bling<\/em> denotes the condition of the world when all structures of life18<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 18 <\/a> - I employ the term \u201cstructure\u201d in a broad sense, to include architecture and urban development, industries, transportation and distribution networks, information \u00adnetworks, the media, forms of government\u2009\u2014\u2009in short, all the frameworks deployed on Earth by human activity.<\/span> are governed by this approximate yet terribly exact principle: 20% of the world\u2019s population consumes 80% of its resources. Through the superstructures and infrastructures deployed between environmental resources and civilization, this minority imposes its choices and its identity, a fundamental imbalance that regulates and organizes the lives of all of humanity. In other words, contemporary luxury can only be reduced to its ostentatiousness, to its abstract capacity for representation<\/em>, for it rests on no reality, on no rational or concrete justification. This tension between technical progress and its \u201cmorality\u201d pervades Wim Delvoye\u2019s usually subversive productions. Like construction site machinery borrowing from the sumptuous architecture of cathedrals (the Caterpillar<\/em> series), Delvoye uses the contemporary aura of human technical genius, often relating it to the fundamental egotism of Ikonenmaker<\/em>.19<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 19 <\/a> - Ikonenmacher<\/em>: the artist\u2019s German neologism to designate an \u201cicon-maker.\u201d<\/span> Most of his works, like the controversial Cloaca<\/em> machines, and even his own image as an artist, are subject to heavy publicity, making use of logos (Cloaca\u2009\u2014\u2009New and Improved logo<\/em>, 2002) and derivative products, from polished industrial design to mass-produced \u201cWim Delvoye\u201d children\u2019s figurines sold in \u201cWim Shops.\u201d Like Jeff Koons, who exhibited next to the Sun King at Versailles, the Belgian startiste<\/em> confided that he sought to achieve maximum visual efficiency so that art, thanks to the image, could remain understood by everyone. Knocked down, redefined, or eradicated by most twentieth-century avant-gardes, representation<\/em> is an internationalized mode of life, and advertising is its chief mode of communication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The idea of representation, once often considered an alienation of the image and of our rapport with the world, has become a sine qua non<\/em> for artists\u2019 existence: for many, art is only a word if one is not represented<\/em> by a gallery, on the Internet, in art fairs and national and international \u00adbiennials. Dozens of artists go to Venice every two years to represent<\/em> countries. Representation is also supposed to be the basis for all forms of democratic, and therefore acceptable, government. The corollary of representation, today, is a mise en sc\u00e8ne<\/em> that introduces a semblance, or pretence, of freedom in the array of representations that surround us. Freedom of the artist\u2019s condition is bling-bling when the locus of art is confused with the locus of its mise en sc\u00e8ne. And because art opens onto regions that escape both time and space, the crux of the current \u00adavant-garde, of the global fact and the cosmopolitan imagination, bears less on art itself than on the ways in which we may inhabit it without turning it into a representation<\/em>\u2009\u2014\u2009and thus an efficient tool\u2009\u2014\u2009of ideology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [Translated from the French by Ron Ross]<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/69_DO01_Carles_PierreGilles_fullmoon_2007-scaled.jpg\")
photo : \u00a9 Pierre et Gilles, permission | courtesy Galerie J\u00e9r\u00f4me de Noirmont, Paris<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/69_DO01_Carles_Fleury_GucciShoesESSE-scaled.jpg\")
Sylvie Fleury, Vuitton Bag<\/em>, 2000.
photos : permission | courtesy Galerie Art et Public, Gen\u00e8ve
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photo : permission de l’artiste | courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n