so - one of the most interesting highlights of yesterday's touring was the BlackBox/Superflex exhibit. What is it you ask? a 21 minute film of an abandoned McDonalds restaurant being filled with water slowly - and then a current being added to the water so the resulting slurry of fry oil, coffee and fries and cups - swirls in a dimly lit vortex.
Since 1993, Superflex—the Danish art collective based in Copenhagen and Rio de Janeiro whose members are Jakob Fenger (b. Roskilde, 1968), Rasmus Nielsen (b. Hjørring, 1969), and Bjørnstjerne Reuter Christiansen (b. Copenhagen, 1969)—has staged unconventional artworks that use social intervention as a means of calling attention to such issues as democratization, environmentalism, and consumerism. The group’s “actions” and provocations have ranged from an initiative that helped Thai pig farmers convert barnyard excrement into marketable biofuel to an urban project for which they conspired with convenience store owners to disorient customers at the checkout by informing them their “purchases” would be free.
Commercial imagery, such as the logos and signature color combinations that are increasingly inescapable aspects of our visual landscape, has inspired contemporary artists since even before the Pop era. For “Flooded McDonald’s,” (2009), Superflex meticulously constructed and filmed a life-size replica of the interior of an actual restaurant of the fast food chain. The artists borrow the cinematic vocabulary of documentaries, ads, and disaster movies to create this suspenseful, ambiguous drama. For reasons unknown, the patrons and staff have left the premises, leaving viewers behind to watch, think, and speculate.
It was so odd - and SO perfect for the modern art museum. and so thematic since McRib has been the running joke of the vacation so far.
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