Invited to take part in a group show at De Appel museum in Amsterdam, I paid my homage to Kazimir Malevich, whose abstract paintings were at the centre of a dispute between his heirs and the Stedelijk Museum, accused of having obtained these paintings illegally.
The dispute had been widely publicized in Russia, but news of it hadn’t reached the rest of Europe yet. At that time I was artist-in-residence in Berlin, and had come into contact with a group of Russian artists among whom was Alexander Brener. Three months prior to my show in Amsterdam, Brener had been arrested for spraying a green dollar sign on one of the cross paintings at the centre of the dispute. Brener said he intended the dollar sign to appear nailed to the cross. He justified his ‘vandalic act ‘ as a performance against ‘corruption and commercialism in the art world’. At the time of my show at De Appel, he was still in prison, and nobody seemed interested in his fate, as most media had described him as a deranged man rather than an artist.
Though my project for De Appel wasn’t a comment on Brener’s performance, it addressed similar concerns.
I hung two monochrome paintings, behind which i concealed sensors attached to a dvd-player. Unlike what happens in museums, a sign invited people to touch the canvases, as if they were a touch-screen interface, and pose questions about anything. The electronically-controlled system would provide answers, just like an oracle. I had pre-recorded only three answers "Yes, No, Maybe", which were played randomly as soon as one asked a question and touched the canvas.
As art exhibitions increasingly tend to create a spectacular space, satisfying the demand for skin-deep entertainment and immediate, emotional gratifications, while maintaining and re-inforcing the auratic dimension of art through its inflated commercial value, I transformed abstract painting (the ultimate intellectual experience) into a funfair attraction that elicited an irrational, superstitious behaviour.
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