Silke Jasso
Listen, I am all for artists putting in their own two cents and selling quirky art to represent their own persona. I love a good painting full of colors, or sculptures that make you do a double take because you’re not quite sure what it is.
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But this is too much. You’re telling me someone woke up one day and said “I’m going to buy a big mac, take the pickle out, and sell it.” Oh, for $6000 might I add! That’s exactly what Matthew Griffin did, titling his masterpiece, “Pickle.” Basically what he did was buy a cheese burge and decided to fling the pickle on the cealing of an art gallery space. Surprisingly, the pickle stuck quite well to and didn’t fall from the ground.
The pickle was shown at Michel Lett, which is an art gallery in New Zealand, during their show titled “Hosting Fine Arts, Sydney. According to People, Giffin “ikes to use comedy as a jumping off point to discuss more serious topics.”
A Pickled Masterpeace?
Ryan Moore, director of Fine Arts, Sydney, stated that “a humorous response to the work is not invalid – it’s OK, because it is funny. Moore, representing Griffin, said that whether or not the pickle was “art” is not really up to the artist itself rather those who see and react to it.
“Generally speaking, artists aren’t the ones deciding whether something is art or not – they are the ones who make and do things,” he noted. Whether something is valuable and meaningful as artwork is the way that we collectively, as a society choose to use it or talk about it.”
He continued, “As much as this looks like a pickle attached to the ceiling – and there is no artifice there, that is exactly what it is – there is something in the encounter with that as a sculpture or a sculptural gesture.”
The show reportedly closed on July 30, but the work was reportedly listed for a heavy price tag of $10,000 Australian dollars. That equals $6,916 in US dollars. It’s not clear if it sold or not, but the purchaser wouldn’t be able to receive the actual pickle on display but rather “instructions on how to recreate the art in their own space.”
So…you’re basically paying for nothing. You can go ahead and buy the cheeseburger yourself and throw it up to the roof.
