When you're a capitalist tool, everything looks like product.
I have never been able to figure out the DIS Magazine/Red Bull relationship, but I get the sense that they're trying to take a critical stand on art and culture from entirely within the branded corporate consumption bubble. It's not just the air they breathe, but the very atoms and quarks they [and, they'd argue] we are made of.
If one considered their approach to art as a luxury product whose auratic glow can burnish the brands who sponsor it, to be tainted, I imagine DIS would say, "Hell yes, and 'tain't enough!"
Still, Shanzhai Biennial is the funnest art/fashion name to say out loud since Bodega Vendetta. So I'm totally on board with the SHANZHAI ORIGINALSTM collection of ORIGINAL FAKE products the duo of Babak Radboy [L] and Cyril Duval [R] created for DISown in March/April.
DISown was an art product pop-up shop at the Red Bull Studio whose opening was tied to the Armory Show, the last NY art fair before Frieze, the one that's just ending today. So even though it's over, I don't think you have any less chance of actually buying either the toddler-sized Chanel slippers or these hype DADidas kicks. They seem like pure concept. If you must consume, though, try giving the Shanzhai folks a call. Or jeez, it's Shanzhai; make it yourself.
DISown, 6 Mar - 6 Apr | "'DISown - Not For Everyone,' is an art exhibition posing as a retail store" [redbullstudios]
Preview: 11 Artists from DIS Magazine's DISown Exhibition Describe the Products They're Selling [complex]
Shanzhai Biennial is on Facebook because of course they are [fb]
