For Your Tears by Heimo Zobernig and Simon Iurino
Ephemeral objects and printed matter relating to exhibitions are usually made for the visitors and potential guests of an exhibition space. In contrast, this handkerchief, a memento of the duo show of Heimo Zobernig and Simon Iurino at Spazio Orr in Brescia, Italy, is primarily intended for the people who cannot visit the exhibition. Thus, although produced in limited quantities, its potential reach is almost limitless. With Earth’s population reaching a staggering 8 billion in November 2022, it is fair to assume that this humble handkerchief should be useful to at least 99,99% of all living humans.
Furthermore – with every passing year – we all carry a growing number of sorrows, both those of universal proportions and more specific, personal ones. Even though this handkerchief was specifically made for those mourning the fact that they could not attend the exhibition at Spazio Orr, it may also come in handy when facing other hardships in life.
The handkerchiefs are hand-sewn from greenscreen fabric (which is also used for Zobernig’s installation at the gallery) with the title embroidered and the fine-print silk-screened. Each handkerchief is housed in a silkscreened and numbered box. The multiple was made by Heimo Zobernig and Simon Iurino in collaboration with A-FL to celebrate the duo exhibition of Heimo Zobernig and Simon Iurino at Spazio Orr in Brescia, Italy. The exhibition is open between 22 October 2022 – 20 January 2023. The multiple is released in a limited edition of 50 copies (+ 20 AP).
Sanna Helena Berger at Spazio ORR on 90antiope magazine
XS is a paradoxical measurement. It is both a voluminous abundance and lavish opulence when pronounced excess, and at the same time an acronym for the Extra Small, the slim and slender; the unfortunately still aspirational bijou. Absurdly we can find abundance in the excess of the extra small just as something can be produced through removal.
Obvious is the privatisation of the idea in the clandestine style of less. But what if the reversal of concept and form could create a kind of minimal representation of a maximisation of memory? When instead of hidden behind titles ohne titel, small and slight, delicate delectable nuggets of maybe edible, now sculptural matter become short stories. Can this margin note of aversion of minimalism for the sake of elitism also be bundled into the concept of parallels drawn between the luxury item and the luxury being?
There are contradictions in the imagemaking of luxe. Via the machinery of luxury commodities residual ephemera slips through. And at the moment of purchase the already near-passé measurement of grandeur exists in an entirely temporary zenith made from butter melting fast in the hot hot sun, suddenly leaving the buyer tip-toeing near the high street and its sinkholes of trickle down economics. Original and copy. Unachievable or pedestrian. Rich or poor. Expensive or gratis. It’s all cheese from where I’m standing.
But there is a comparison to be made between this immediate transaction of influence, seen as a gauche reality of the merely material transactional matter which can be bought and sold in the market of possessions. To that of the promotional purposes asked of the artist persona who accessorise not only the art they make but persona(lly) propels the success of the situation in which their art is shown, sold and distributed in the fraudulent market of the most opulent of
illusions. A value assigned (or removed) by an economy of the de jour, au fait, a la mode. Rules set by a defunkt market of fine arts which amazingly enough manages to claim hierarchy and gravitas even though employing the very same game theory as the one degraded as fashion.
Does it appear a confusing concept to manipulate the market of the manageable object whilst wading knee deep in it? Well, what can I say? Elite aspirations cleave nicely under the pressure of the heavy sterling silver knife like a slice of lukewarm cheese.
An artifact of this kind of luxury is contained in its entity. Packaging, devoid of product still signals the idea of the ultimate luxury; identity and the security and safety of its associative branding. What is the cost of becoming a luxury object oneself? What composes Obsession and what composites the counterfeited Obsessed?
My art making takes this roundabout route all the time. Stalling in cul-de-sacs of entangled thoughts of opposition and compliance. Disgust and desire for the same thing, the same scene. But in essence I aim to depict the particularly problematic parallels between luxury products and the production of an artist persona as a gateway to becoming, themselves, a luxury item – an
idol. The extra small, slimline, minimal, the private, the removal, the backroom, the limited, becomes the opulent excess, rising on a market of new economies of the extra everything, filling the air with abundant absolute marketable extra-vaganz.
But enough abstraction and attempts at avant-gardish near-private parallels. In simplicity this is a small show of a-moral fables. Little stories which mirror some very basic humor. They trip you up a little but they don’t mean to be mean. There is no besser-wisser mannerisms in their meaning. They mirror both material and message in their composition. They oppose the need to create a luxury item, but through the language of minimalism appears to be one, a lavish lingering scent of self in the spaces that we move through. Where we so dearly (even if not
admittedly, how gauche!) want to remain on the skin of others, in the mouth of others and on the mind of others. The want and need to be somehow different in the world of same-ish scents. The opulent illusion of individualism of perfume is a good allegory because the charade is so smart, it tricks so many. Even though a scent can be produced and worn en masse, in millions of multitudes, it still signals an idea of the self, to ourselves and to others. You smell another
wearer and how odd because she smells just like your mother who wears the same scent, who’s scent it is, not as a mere representative of this scent, but this scent personified. The damage we do to ourselves when trying to stake our own in the market of original selves as an artist is an airport-tax-free-perfume-isle-migraine-inducing one and when not sure of how to remain on a single path towards an easy recognisable regurgitative repetitive moment, even
harder to maintain. I guess this show is about many things, never not one. It is somehow a shout and a silence. A delicate silver coated delectable almond, just so balanced on a beige plastic spoon from which my daughter ate gelato on top a sculpture in Chianti as well as the mockery of the mirage made into magic which is the market of the representational self.
ORR 