Visionaire Presents Artist Commercials

Visionaire Presents Artist Commercials

Monday August 8 – Wednesday August 31, 2016

VISIONAIRE, the ultimate art and fashion publication, is arguably one of the most influential and exclusive creative projects in the history of printed matter. Working with the highest caliber of artists, fashion creators, celebrities, musicians, writers and personalities—and challenging the conventions of how we experience art and fashion—VISIONAIRE continues its ever-curious experimentations in image making.

In celebration of VISIONAIRE’s 25th anniversary and its curatorial partnership with Cadillac House, the luxury publishing house commissions a year-long series of “artist commercials”, or short films highlighting a selection of their 65 highly collectible, multi-format issues published since 1991.

The initial idea for the series was, itself, inspired by select TV commercials from the 1970s: an advert for a Japanese department store starring Faye Dunaway eating a boiled egg; Andy Warhol’s commercials for Burger King and TDK; and Salvador Dali’s piece for Alka-Seltzer. Radically different from the commercials of today, these “artvertorials” are entertaining, enduring and challenging.

For VISIONAIRE ARTIST COMMERCIALS, each artist or filmmaker selects an issue of VISIONAIRE, whose themes—DESIRE, POWER, PRIVATE, FANTASY and many more—provide the inspiration to create these evocative and unexpected films. Ranging from 15 seconds to 4 minutes, the outcome is open to the artist’s personal interpretation and is reflected in the series’ dynamic variation.

Director Amanda Demme films actress Juliette Lewis interpreting issue 13 SEVEN DEADLY SINS through movement. Directing duo Alice Rosati & Charlie Le Mindu re-create a surrealist 26 FANTASY film, complete with Dior couture, contortionists, and a blue painted woman. Ivan Oita compiles a humorous montage of Leonardo DiCaprio eating and drinking throughout his films for 47 TASTE. Tyler Ford captures model Bella Hadid during personal moments for 52 PRIVATE. Matthew Placek immortalizes performance artist Marina Abramovic, made up as a traditional Kosovar bride while reciting a mantra for 65 FREE.

This concept of combinatorial variation through an open-ended editing process lies at the core of the VISIONAIRE ethos, with the publication providing a creative playground for its contributors, free from the constraints of criticism and traditional commercial endeavors. Here, in this exhibition— and with a certain sense of irony—VISIONAIRE muses further upon this notion of artistic freedoms vs commercialism through the tongue-in-cheek oxymoron of an “artist commercial”. Where under normal circumstances, a commercial is for commerce, these works are intended purely as experimental art and non-traditional film, reflecting VISIONAIRE’s incessant expanding of the boundaries of what is considered publishing and the way we view and experience art and fashion.