We’ve not visited Marfa on at least three other road trips. We’re always near it in the middle of the night, at some inconvenient time, or something just seems to keep us away. Having some time to kill on our way home, Michele and I finally decided to drop off the 10 and make a little detour to Marfa, just to check it out. Marfa itself is a whole other post, I guess, this is just about Prada Marfa, which is not really in Marfa, but closer to Valentine, Texas. I guess Prada Valentine wouldn’t have the art world credibility.
This piece is simultaneously a deeply moving, thought provoking site specific installation/sculpture and a softball gently lobbed over the plate of anyone looking to wield the bat of criticism. I see it as saying one of two things.
1) Its incongruity to its environment, its out-of-placeness transforms this urban object into a purely aesthetic object. By removing the goods inside from circulation, it mocks the crass commercialism of fashion and the urban upper class.
2) Prada Marfa is a critisism of Marfa itself – it suggests that it is conceivable that one could build a Prada store here and that the same tiring hipsters from Los Angeles or New York who have built themselves a strange outpost here in the desert would probably charter planes into Marfa’s tiny airport just to spend even more money in order to buy their silly footwear. It’s about bragging rights and opulence, you know?
I’m comfortable with either interpretation. It’s nice to be out there in the wind sounds of the desert, puzzling over this object. It shares the mystery of other side of the road art, like a giant ball of twine, we find meaning in its purposelessness, and like the ruin it eventually will become we feel the onset of the momentary sadness and wonder that future drivers will experience as they pass it at high speed on their way to elsewhere.
above – the very existence of this piece of art inspires an urge to vandalism and violence in many, I bet. The awning is either full of bullet holes or cigarette burns, and the store has been broken into and robbed before. This fist-sized spiderweb of shattered glass is the most obvious artifact of this frustration. The glass appears to be double paned, and exceptionally thick – a deceptively transparent barrier against the realities of desert life. The artists have stated that they intend the building to fall to ruins over time, but it also exists outside of that reality, by being “armoured” against the normal effects of time and of human actions.
above – The most interesting and beautiful part of the piece to me was the mass of insect life living inside and around the structure. Any enclosed structure in the desert will eventually become akin to a terrarium, a closed environment where masses of insects gather and die, going through the generational motions of life – eating, fucking, killing and dying, writing their history on the unwalked carpet of this tiny ersatz store. The exterior of the store was home to a bewildering crowd of insects, a pair of massive female black widows tend their bulging egg sacs inside the far corners of each awning.
I don’t think I need to point out the obvious A Thousand Years reference (What is it Damien Hirst day around here?). Lacking the childhood sadism of the bug zapper, and being an unintentional massing of insects, it is made meditative, despite the struggle within.
above – adjacent to the store, this power pole acts as another reminder that this store is unlike the other structures in the desert, despite the decay envisioned by its creators. While I think the CCTV surveillance of the store is non-existent, I see this sign as being akin to the glass – an inability to let go of the piece and allow it to have its natural life.
above – the store really does arouse something in you. You want to engage with it, but are reduced to either vandalism or passive observation. Being there, I felt I had to take some kind of action, or to perform in some way upon the structure. By urinating on the side of this structure, I conceptually sent the piece back to the piss scented streets of New York that is its natural environment. Sure…
Technorati Tags: Prada, Prada Marfa, Marfa, On The Road, art, site specific, store, fashion, urination
By urinating on the side of this structure, I conceptually sent the piece back to the piss scented streets of New York
Or back in San Pedro. I associate the screamed phrases “hold him down and piss of him, piss on his head!” with NOWHERE but San Pedro.
What is that a reference to? Am I dense? Or just not Pedro enough yet?
This is a simply a reference to me associating the OVERWHELMINGLY STRONG STENCH OF URINE with certain Pedro alleyways. I’ll let you do the necessary footwork to identify which ones I’m talking about.