“The artist superhero - limited edition gold”
Duration: 1 hour 30 minutes, 2008
Performed: May 10th, 2008
Exhibition: Spacetacular, Tashkeel arts center, Dubai, UAE
Curator: Sam Bardaouil / Emanuela Nobile Mino
I was producing "limited edition gold" artist superhero gold blocks, like a factory, for the entire run of the performance. Behind my back was a video projection of several things... one of them was Dubai's skyline, which I covered up with golden canvases... the canvases themselves had gold written over them in gold and sprayed over with gold too.. GOLD GOLD GOLD!!!!! I executed the entire performance in a total artist superhero manner and each time a new gold painting was ready, I assumed a typical comic superhero position in front of the video projection and pop-up fields appeared on the video, like in the comics, where you usually read: "POW" or "BOOM"... eccetera... only this time there were no "pows" and "booms"... the fields remained empty and the only thing filling them was the "gold" writing on my canvases.
This performance is divided into two parts. After the wall is almost totally covered up with artist superhero gold canvases, I continue producing "LIMITED GOLD" and proceed through a self transformation... the gold that covered my video projection now starts covering me too. I become one with my artist superhero video... I wear my golden canvas like a tin soldier uniform. I assume the shape of an abstract robot.
The two monitors involved in the performance were on pedestals, facing the public. On the monitors you could see close up live transmissions of me producing the "limited edition gold". I want video and reality to mix up as much as possible. This is not a clean performance. I want technical cables to be everywhere, light hanging in the picture, cameras in the performance space. I want to transmit a feeling of work in progress as I endlessly re-portray man's eagerness to always get more and more and more!
I want to show a Dubai that is in such an expanding and developing rush that everything kind of blends together in one: people, nature, architecture, culture...The man becomes what he wants to get, his city and home become what he wants to get, his work and actions become what he wants to get too. In my case that "what he wants to get" is pathetically figured as gold... and a fake gold too... the "limited edition gold" will in fact be produced in such quantities that it would normally be a paradox to call it limited in the first place. We all believe to be able to produce and possess something unique and extremely special. We want to build the "only" tallest building in the world, we want to have the "only" biggest diamond in the world, we want to have the "only" biggest amount of gold in the world.
In the end we do not have any of those things. They are just illusions we proudly dress our selves up with to make other people fall for the effect of us being unique and limited. I, in fact, produce all paintings in the same way, they all end up covering a city and myself and they all end up making me disappear inside a cage of ugly copy and paste materialism. In the end the Dubai skyline could be any city's skyline and I could be anybody. The artist superhero will prove once more to be ananti-hero. He will proudly produce limited edition gold and disappear inside of his own creation. What he thought would make him special and unique, will ultimately become his undoing.