BILIANA VELKOVA
Jeffrey Boone Gallery
Vancouver
29 May – 22 June 2008
The launch of Breathless, a perfume that exists in brand only, extends the artist’s research into consumerist notions of identity and the accompanying obsession with labels. In Velkova’s practice, marketing strategies and art-making practices coalesce to illuminate the phenomenon of co-branding celebrity identity and luxury consumer products. Launching a non-existent product with an unknown persona, devoid of famous trademarks, she poses questions of the artist as brand so as to blur the lines of art, commodity, and social identity. Employing marketing strategies reminiscent of ad campaigns that use popular icons to create brand, the exhibition consists of packaging, a promotional video and the use of the gallery space as consumerist venue to attract attention and material curiosity. In the absence of an actual product, only a celebrity mirage will exist.
- Jeffrey Boone