It is true that the contemporary art market never ceases to amaze us. Provocations on provocations, this is the motto...but also the philosophy underlying the latest artistic action by the New York art collective MSCHF, that after purchasing a Spots Painting by Damien Hirst, they tore it to pieces and created multiple editions.
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In short, it would seem that someone has repaid the British artist with the same cutting irony also in terms of sales. On April 27, 2020, the collective launched the unsettling initiative on its website, and declared that after the acquisition of a Damien Hirst's print worth 30 thousand dollars it would have cut out all its 88 colored spots and then sold them individually.
"Severed Spots" the title of this recent project, that has gone beyond the boundaries of the imaginable. The company bought a work by Damien Hirst worth $ 30 thousand to reduce it into many small pieces, 88 to be precise. Each cutout (3.5 x 3.5 cm) with the colored dot in the center was sold for $ 480 in seconds. But it did not end there, the printing frame with Hirst's handwritten signature was auctioned starting at $ 126,000 and has already reached $ 173,000 in the last few hours. The aim is an act of protest against investors who do business by buying fractions of very expensive works of art.
Provocative and countercurrent, the start-up was born in 2016 and soon became famous for creating truly unusual projects and products, of what some might call genius and others simply junk. To understand what it's all about, just a few of their highlights: the Jesus Shoes, the Nike Air Max 97 shoes filled with holy water from the Jordan River and the Persistence of Chaos-a laptop infected with six of the world's most dangerous computer viruses, sold for $ 1.35 million didn't go unnoticed. And if this seems bizarre, what about the app that allows you to watch Netflix while you are at work or the Youtube channel with hundreds of videos of a man who eats everything, from a mayonnaise jar to a photo of Pete Davidson.
There is no common thread between their projects, just as there is no limit to the creativity of the ten young members of the histrionic group. "Our perspective is that everything is fun in a nihilistic way," said Gabriel Whaley, MSCHF CEO. "We are not here to make the world a better place. We are shedding light on how much everything sucks». Perhaps this is the only truth that hides behind their absurd plans, making fun of everything, denouncing the paradoxes of the twenty-first century, and doing it in the most unscrupulous way that can exist. By the way, the next appointment is set for May 12th.