Cipis na Black Friday: [completo]

From the 17^th century on, art underwent a major transition in its production and consumption relationships, from a model based on patronage and orders, often subject to the whims and fancies of patrons, to commercialization through freer systems, anticipating demand and highlighting the emergence of the art dealer, a professional responsible for the promotion of art, and later on, of galleries, definitively establishing what we conceive of as the art market. As time went on, the art market consolidated further, building sign-like connections with another market that moved from collective logics towards individualization and private life, the market of luxury goods and services.

            A consumer good becomes a luxury object once it can constitute itself as singularity, a quality that allows it to be exhibited and admired for the splendor of its beauty, for the rarity of its constituent elements, for the recognized creativity of its creator and, more recently, for the brand that lends it its name. In this trajectory, art and luxury share meanings underpinned by exclusivity, by the ability to stimulate people’s sensibilities and become a benchmark of taste and refinement. As of the 19^th century, luxury itself becomes a theme in the arts, seeing as artists, keen observers, are interested in capturing all the vibrancy of the times, luxury being one of its most exuberant aspects. And art lends luxury the necessary dose of legitimacy. Thus, the consolidation of contemporary society takes place through consumption, characterized by a departure from the utilitarian function of objects towards symbolic values, a fertile ground for luxury objects and experiences, making consumption responsible for the building of lifestyles, values, and conducts.

            In this sense, the sensory immersion in the “elegant supermarket” Cipis offers us with his exuberant, cheerful, provocative art installs movements, sensibilities, and reflections that may suggest what seems like but aren’t irreconcilable contradictions; on the contrary, they reveal the sensitive wit of a visual artist who coaxes out of colors, shapes, and spaces a particular way of being where creating and living are one and the same. Once again, art and luxury instigate us, and consumption comes up as a way of accessing the magical perks of owning and being through owning.

            We are desireful beings because we are fallible. This lacking condition propels us towards possible completeness expressed in pursuits that often defy reasonability. Unlike the trivial consumer good, art has the ability to encapsulate the artist’s genius in the materiality of the artwork – the ultimate luxury object of desire. As such, the artwork is subject and object, which explains its appeal to the owner-collector who surrenders starry-eyed at the possibility of completeness through exclusivity, through the artwork’s unique character, through its aura-like existence, its heavenly spark, a certain victory in the face of our finitude.

            Cipis on Black Friday comes to tension the tradition of contemplating art as fixation, lingering, and depth set in. By presenting the possibility of encountering the singularity of the artwork through immersion into the multiplicity of plural artworks, it induces the wandering of gazes, minds, and bodies as the only possible act in the face of immensity. Spatiality operates through distinct paths that mix with temporalities that fold. In the experience of distance, the totalizing artwork reveals itself as consumed scenography, a present-past. In the experience of proximity, the artwork reveals its consumable exceptionality, present-future.

            Four hundred and forty paintings construct the scene of a masterful temple of consumption, aisles and shelves that reveal themselves through sequences and interruptions, in patterns and particularities, an immersive experience in multiplicity that seems to homogenize but really surprises by containing discreet difference. Whereas the material culture of consumption expands in the plentiful supply of the marts of the world, made viable by industrial reproducibility and technological advances, Marcelo Cipis’ supermarket promotes the seriality that stems from numerous unique acts, an amalgamation of the sacred, typical of classic art, and the profane, an inherent condition of consumption.

            And the ritualization of consumption begins in the street, in the architecture of the venue itself, a pane of glass that attracts passersby’s gazes and lures us in. Inside, luxuriant shelves showcase products that are at once multiple and unique. Repeating colors and shapes that offer us originality in details. The possibility of immediate purchase of the unique artwork quells the anxiety of voracious consumers and transfers ownership, bringing about ownership rituals, initiated in the enactment of wrapping up, while at the same time destroying and deconstructing the multiple artwork, making the scene alive, mutant, and unstable. The purchase is the sovereign act of the individual and, as a result, simultaneously, the deconstruction of the unified totality that had been offered to us at the outset. Individuality and collectivity constitute themselves into novel reflective layers.

            In consumption, the ritualization of ownership triggers the disposal stemming from deterioration and usage, a predestined end. Owning a Cipis on Black Friday, an imported promotional designation, ensures transmission and, as a result, eternity, as a sanctified consequence in the face of the aura that despises capital. And what is more, the sense of advantage is long-lived, a powerful driver of impulse-driven consumption.

            It is well known that the undifferentiation of consumer goods strives for singularity through advertising, a privileged language of our time whereby the serially made becomes unique through promotional simulacrum – “the best in the world...,” “made for you...,” “the latest cry in innovation...”. In turn, the uncommon in the work of art, enabled by the artist’s creative act, lends itself to consumption in the immediateness of the act of purchase: sold! As a result, we notice the extent to which Cipis moves, at times challenging and toying with repetition and reproducibility, and at others taking advantage of them. This brand of disdain-advantage had been present as early as in “Cipis Transworld,” the artist’s performance-based installation during the 21^st Art Biennial, in 1991. What ties together material consumption and Cipis on Black Friday is the promotional language that relies on the qualitative signs of art which surprises our senses in order to sell. Among simulacra of bargains, great deals, and imaginary haggling, Cipis on Black Friday is the emblematic expression of the richness of art, of the artist’s refinement, and of the desire we all have for a morsel of that heavenly commodity, the work of art.