Just Decoration Tag Cloud - MOM Park Shopping Centre
description
An installation assembled from 4000 tags turns a traditional shopping area into a visual art experience.
“Good business is the best art.” (Andy Warhol)
The main elements of the art project Just Decoration Tag Cloud are price tags found on items of clothing in fashion shops. These tags are commonly used to identify a certain brand and indicate the size and other physical features of a product. The tags of the Just Decoration installation, however, represent a fictitious brand that points out today’s superficiality by downgrading even art to the level of decoration. On the tags, that bear a striking resemblance to those of the fashion shops, every price is zero. The thousands of fake tags constitute an eye-catching cloud formation, an airy attraction in a crowded area of the mall. The dummy tags function as mere decoration, but the artist has hidden a few real price tags among them with which some lucky visitors can win a real product. Just Decoration is a fictitious brand. The installation is a symbolic game by way of art that playfully holds a mirror to the human obsession with decoration and appearance.
On the one hand, the art installation is a visual attraction, an impressive piece of decoration in a shopping centre. On the other hand, using the language of art, it plays with the process of shopping, giving it a twist. The visitors try to find the few real price tags. A piece of paper is suddenly transformed, monetised and materialised into a tangible product. The fictitious brand becomes real, it becomes a work of art. It encourages the viewers to buy, makes them part of a game that inevitably ends in a purchase. In the course of the interaction, viewers turn into consumers, consumers into viewers. The unusual location of the installation is significant – the work of art is not in the “white cube” of a gallery or a museum, but in a shopping center. The installation descends in the space as if it were some common seasonal decoration. The irony of the Just Decoration Tag Cloud not only reveals the randomness and superficiality of the senses, but also inspires one to question its underlying meaning.
