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For Beaufort 04 artist Lucy McKenzie has curated a project that spectacularly transformes the facade of the Mu.ZEE in Ostend to the building’s original function: a department store.

Lucy McKenzie brought together the same group of artists and designers to show their work in the 2011 exhibition Town-Gown Conflict at Kunsthalle Zurich, who share the opinion that the boundary between their production and consumption is imperceptible.

The work is called Te Kust en te Keur (or in English: ‘All in Abundance’) and the press release gives some insight in who might purchase something in this particular department store:

‘It is difficult to know who the typical customer of the store will be. Te Kust en te Keur is not just a luxury goods emporium but supplies practical hygiene products, work wear and even secondhand records. Even so, it’s safe to say she is probably female, that she knows her subconscious is being deliberately pandered to, and that she will visit specifically to have her whims revealed and catered to. Drawn in several directions at once, she will be tempted into purchasing desire itself. […] They [the artists, ed] proceed from the proposition that art can be read as pure advertisement, both for itself and for whatever affinities an artist chooses to make.’

Find out for yourself if you should be slightly offended (as a woman, consumer and/or artist) by that statement, or if you can let yourself get carried away by the fleeting moment of idealism offered and dictated by the like-minded group of McKenzie & co. Check the first photo’s here.

(© photo’s: Steven Decroos, Belgium, 2012)

Te Kust en te Keur
31 March – 30 September 2012
Mu.ZEE, Ostend (BE)
www.muzee.be

With works by Lucy McKenzie (SC), Beca Lipscombe (SC), Caitlin Keogh (US), Lucile Desamory (BE), Carolin Lerch (AT)

Jolien Verlaek

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