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Private Collection
(various stolen objects from private galleries for contemporary art, 2005-2006)
The installation Private Collection is a reaction to the commoditization of art and to gallery monopolies that price art, dictate which artworks have value, and set themselves up as the arbiters of artists' qualities. The artists decided to disrupt the western art machine, stealing piecemeal from galleries in Paris, Berlin, London and Vienna. By concentrationg on banal, unvalued thingsthey have created a collection of discrete objects from everyday life. The paradox of this collection is that the objects belonged to the inventories of the most renowned of galleries, yet it was after leaving these galleries' possession that these items became pieces of art - a reversal of the normal transaction. Here, the artistic act is a piratical gesture: by a volitive and intentional disrupt of the existing chain of artist-curator-collector, it undermines capitalistic market orthodoxies and produces an autonomous value zone.
