The Unfair Fair: You are here

Friday, 22 February 2008

What sort of radicalism are we talking about? That of modern avant-gardes?
Here, when I speak of radicalism, it's more an image of radicalism in painting. The moment I start painting is when my position on this question is the most evident. I start painting on an object, a painting, that by its very form has already resolved many of the formal issues of modernism: the fabric is a support for colors, a pattern — a grid what's more —, and even performs a movement by deforming the grid. The action of painting is a second phase. And this phase is truly an after thought in terms of avant-garde ambitions. We can say that my painting is detached from them, even if it still manifests the symptoms. If we consider that distancing strategies are characteristic of modernism, we also need to see that the distancing in my work — the deformation of the grid — comes from a traditional act shared by all painters : stretching a canvas. In my case, radicalism is not heroic but rather everyday, archetypal.
-Nicolas Chardon/Judicael Lavrador
Index, in catalogue. Nicolas Chardon, 2004, published by Revolver, Archiv Fur Aktuelle Kunst

ARTIST: Gregor Passens
TITLE: Wake up
DATE: 2005
MEDIUM: Video
TIME: 5:25 mins.
DESCRIPTION: Firework at dawn in the crater of a volcano
(in Catamarca, Argentina, 4000 m. altitude)

ARTIST: Runo Lagomarsino
TITLE: Untitled (Geometry of Hope)
DATE: 2007
MEDIA: Print
SIZE: 27 x 21 cm

If you don't know what the south is
It's simply because you are from the north

ARTIST: Stanislao Di Giugno
TITLE: “How to make a full trip around the world without moving from your f**king city” or “The Explorer”
MEDIA: Honda SH 50cc

The artist's Honda SH 50cc shows 40,075km on the clock. The distance corresponds to the length of the equatorial line.

ARTISTS: schleuser.net - the Federal Trade Association for Undocumented Travelling (Farida Heuck, Ralf Homann, Manuela Unverdorben)
TITLE: Sticky Tape - Give Away

The Sticky Tape by schleuser.net is an auxiliary tool. Please stick the tape on the ground anywhere a borderline is hindering undocumented travelling or the freedom of movement, make a snapshot and send it accompanied by a short description to the public collection of the Imaginary Border Academy (http://borderacademy.org/) or to info(at)schleuser.net. Thank you.
- schleuser.net

ARTIST: Rossella Biscotti
TITLE: We will be here forever
MEDIA/DESCRIPTION: A tape cassette with a recorded voice of a man saying: "We will be here forever, forever and ever and ever and ever…" He is talking for an hour.

We will be here forever is a re-enactment of a statement by American rapper KRS-ONE. I asked a man to repeat it for the entire length of the tape cassette. Besides its specific political meaning for the Afro community in America, I’m interested in this phrase in relation to his idealism based on a conscious “passive resistance”. It’s a fight based on a physical presence existing over time.
- Rossella Biscotti

www.rossellabiscotti.com

ARTIST: Bettina Buck
TITLE: Hanging Mountains
MEDIA: Clay, metal fixing
SIZE: 23 x 16 x 12cm

…. during the play the king’s crown kept slipping revealing it to be made of cardboard and tinsel. Despite this the play continued.
... I’m interested in the King, his ill-fitting crown and the play.
- Bettina Buck

About

This blog catalogues the inaugural UNFAIR FAIR, which took place in Rome from Friday 29 February to Monday 3 March 2008. The first UNFAIR FAIR project was a sort of event, situation, exhibition, intervention, action and infiltration timed to coincide with two new contemporary art fairs in Rome - ARTEcontemporaneamodernaROMA and ROMA (The ROAD TO CONTEMPORARY ART). The UNFAIR FAIR is in no way formally associated with these art fairs, though it does have a strategic relation to the mainstream economy they represent. Whereas the raison d'être of the contemporary art fair may be characterised by maximization and accumulation, the conditions of the UNFAIR FAIR relate more comfortably to the states of minimization and disintegration. The aim of the UNFAIR FAIR is to show the process of artistic production and transitional art works that index broader practices by each of the invited artists.
Click here for further information

The Principle of Equivalence - Well done, badly done, not done

In 1966, Robert Filliou proposed that the world economy no longer be considered from a political angle, but rather from a poetic point of view, so that work as pain would become work as play. From 1968, he developed his Principle of Equivalence - the principle of the equality in value of the Well Done, the Badly Done and the Not Done. Filliou proposed an unfinished work, by essence not done, but in the process of being done, realised in a state of "Permanent Creation" - "to decide nothing, to choose nothing, to want nothing, to possess nothing, fully awake, sitting quietly, doing nothing."

Going, going gone for ... how much?

The highest price ever paid for a Francis Bacon (£14 million), for a photograph (an Andreas Gursky, 1.7m)... all auction records were shattered in London last week. But who is buying art at these prices - and, frankly, is it worth it? Carole Cadwalladr went in search of the top bidders.

The Observer
Sunday February 11, 2007
Click here to read the article

Silly money

5 Dec 1766
Date of first sale held in Pall Mall, London by James Christie, founder of Christie's

$104.168,000
Record sale at a fine art auction: for Picasso's Garcon a la Pipe, May 2004, Sotheby's, New York

£186,645,960
Value of total sales realised last week at Sotheby's, London

40
Record number of days for an auction sale (for Duke of Buckingham's collection at Stowe House by Christie's in 1848)

£2.51bn
Total global arts sales by Christie's in 2006

85
Number of works sold for over £1m last week at Sotheby's and Christie's, London

£1.7m
The record price for a photograph sold at auction (Andreas Gursky's 99 Cents II, Diptychon sold last week at Sotheby's, London)

£70.4m
Total revenue from Christie's Post War and Contemporary Art Sale last Wednesday. This broke the record set by Sotheby's just 24 hours earlier for a contemporary art auction in Europe.