Demian Repucci content

I was listening this weekend to ‘On The Media’, one of my favorite radio shows, and heard this piece about artist Caleb Larsen and a recent sculpture of his entitled ‘A Tool To Deceive And Slaughter (2009)’.  The sculpture is an 8 inch black acrylic cube.  The cube is for sale on ebay.  Actually, it is always for sale on ebay. 

The sculpture comes with a contract that requires its’ owner to plug it into an ethernet cable.  When it is plugged in the sculpture puts itself up for auction on ebay.  When the piece sells, the owner is required to ship it to the auction winner.  If the sale price is higher than what the current owner bought it for, the contract stipulates that Caleb Larsen gets 15% of the profit. 

Larsen’s website states that ‘A Tool To Deceive And Slaughter’ “… exists in eternal transactional flux.”  It is a misuse of the word ‘eternal’ (”Being without beginning or end; existing outside of time”) which this sculpture is not since it definitely has a beginning.  Just look at the title.  Maybe ‘perpetual’ or ‘constant’ would be better.  But regardless, the idea is not lost on me.  ‘A Tool To Deceive And Slaughter’ in one fell swoop undermines so much of the ‘artist / artwork / owner’ relationship that has been in place for centuries.  In serious question is the concept of artwork ownership.  Is the ‘owner’ now just a pawn in the artistic process?  And conceived most probably in direct protest of the current state of the art auction market, ‘A Tool’s mechanism denies the owner any potential of utilizing the artwork as an ‘investment’.  Not only does it not allow the owner to hold onto the piece in hope that its’ value will increase, but 15% of it’s imminent sale profits will go to the artist, limiting the potential return for the owner.  A trick that I am sure most artists would wish they had thought of when they see one of their pieces sell at auction and all of the proceeds going to the previous owner.

For most artists the creative process ends when they sign their name to an artwork and install it in a gallery.  The life that the piece takes on after that as it makes its way into the art market is completely out of their control.  In “A Tool To Deceive And Slaughter’, Caleb Larsen makes the constant churn of the art auction market part of the art itself.  A completely genius concept.  I look forward to checking in on its sale progress in 40 years.