IKEA Living Project Series / 2000-2001

"showroom" installation with handmade and readymade furniture | 22 Poster photos | Catalogue-Zen Drawings | Artshopping (video) | DIY walls from the IKEA Living Project Series (video)

IKEA Living Project Series started with my Do-It-Yourself construction of small furniture based on IKEA designs selected from IKEA catalogues, as well as my altering or simply purchasing furniture or products from IKEA to be integrated with the handmade furniture in a defined space. This “showroom” installation has traveled to various galleries across the country, with its configuration changing from venue to venue. When the first “showroom” installation ended and the furniture came back to my living space, I documented their “half-furniture, half-artwork” existence in poster-size photos, which may have slyly reflected my own slippery existence as an artist. (22 Poster Photos) Also from the same IKEA catalogues, I colour-copied images of various products, pasted them on paper, and in colour pencil, blacked out everything else but the chosen product. They became to be called Catalogue-Zen drawings.
The term IKEA Living in the title signifies neither an image of middle class living nor the materialism/consumerism in our culture. It is a term that I have adopted to refer to the lifestyle in which the peculiar mentality and problems pertaining to artmaking and the art world do not exist. This proposition of dichotomous consciousness through the quotation of our various daily activities in my art practice, is a necessary strategy to re-investigate the significance of yet another daily activity, artmaking. These various “art-life” endeavours in this project were intended to function as indexes both for the artist and the viewers to contemplate the obscure mechanism behind the designation and perception of artmaking and daily living. IKEA Living Project Series also includes a short video "Do-It-Yourself walls from the IKEA Living Project Series".

**Catalogue-Zen Drawings Reproductions are available for purchase at SHOP