Object of Desire
The House of Clothes, Kyiv, 2020
Borys Kashapov, Oksana Chepelyk, Liliya Chavaga, Lena Siyatovska, Stan Kvitko. Curators: Maria Vtorushina, Lesia Kulchynska
For the first three nights after the lockdown in Kyiv, from 19 to 21 June, the House of Clothes’ showcases are transformed into an exposition space for Set Art Laboratory residency participants.
Showcases are created to transform things into objects of desire. Whatever is placed in a showcase will always seem better and more desirable. The mechanism of transformation is a transparent but impenetrable barrier. The object is very close here as if prepared especially for you. But it is still not in your hands. A showcase is an essential tool for market relations, with which product presentation is possible. But what becomes of an art piece in a shop’s showcase? «It is nonsense to loiter in the streets, especially if there is nothing to buy», says the heroine of Luis Buñuel’s surrealistic film That Obscure Object of Desire. Contemporary streets are overflooded with seductive objects, so with no possibility of possessing them, it is sometimes better not to go out at all. However, we invite you to do just that: loiter among showcases, appropriating nothing. Take this opportunity to find out your relationships with unattainable. What do you feel when it is impossible to touch something tempting? When something is incomprehensible? When does that which attracts remain indifferent towards you? When is that which masquerades as a product impossible to appropriate?
Text: Lesia Kulchynska
Your Art: Accumulator of Desire. About the Exhibition Object of Desire. Author: Ivan Skoryna.