identi-kit Disappearing fabric, 2006 Acrylic and modeling paste, varnish on canvas, copper, steel
Bronze Brand In the works of American artist Jonathan Seliger packaging becomes a series of elaborate sculptures that stops the observer short.
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Marco Senaldi The work of Jonathan Seliger (New York, 1955) might easily be labelled post-modern, appropriation, simulacrum and so on. In the so-called post pop age many artists have drawn on the imagery of products and brands to create installations, sculptures, environments. Vice versa, as he is keen to point out, although at first glance his works appear to be simple ready-mades, or objets trouvé, they are really drawn from elevated cultural sources such as the tradition, first European and then American, of trompe l’oeil. Indeed, they are veritable visual tricks. In other words what at first appears to be a Gucci shopping bag is actually a solid and heavy bronze painted with a particular finish. The milk carton, or the takeaway pizza box are oversized becoming three-dimensional paintings which are exceptionally sophisticated in terms of workmanship, composition, use of colour. This is a very “slow” work, whose paradox is the fact that the effort lies in skilfully transforming objects which are generally got rid of as quickly as possible as they are merely the wrapping of the actual product, of the treasure which is the goal of the shopoholic or simple everyday consumer. This is why Seliger doesn’t talk about readymade but about remade, because his work is part of that series of operations of cultural remakes to which nowadays many artists are
dedicating themselves. After years of crossbreeding elite taste and pop objects, after much devaluation of “artistic” talent, after a great deal of transgression which was an end in itself, it is surprising to meet artists like Seliger who dedicate themselves with incredible scruple to the reconstruction of “minimal fragments” of our consumer universe. It is artists like him who succeed in making us reflect on and understand the secret beauty of a world which is now totally artificial, which we often perceive as alien, despite having made it with our own hands and despite it being part of our everyday experience. I have read that “your work forces the spectator to reflect on the relationship between content and packaging”… Why are you so fascinated by packaging? I like packaging because we live in a consumer culture and define ourselves on the basis of what we consume and I like working with subjects to which anyone can relate - perhaps they make people smile or perhaps they make him uncomfortable but anyone can recognise and understand them. I would say that I agree with Duchamp when he said that the work of art is completed by the spectator - and similarly I do not intend to control his reactions. However, it is obvious that my work is not a ready-made but a remade. The aim is for the process to elevate the material from its condition of being an available object yet the availability of the source might also be part of its emotional pull, if not its pathos. My work wouldn’t be possible without Duchamp’s original gesture but it is its complete opposite. Further to the question, several times I have remade an omnipresent design and manufacturers have then changed that apparently timeless design. Then