Arthur Cordier

Arthur is co-founder of the artist initiative The Balcony, vitrine exhibition space & Susan Bites, studio and project space, both in The Hague.

www.thebalconythehague.com
www.arthurcordier.com

bio

Arthur Cordier (Leuven, 1993) obtained his BA in Urban Space at the ENSAV La Cambre in Brussels and a MA in Artistic Research in The Hague. His work strongly reflects on the economical uses made of public space: in particular advertisement and its displays, its structures as well as their inherent consumerist logics. More recently he has started to investigate the obsolescence advertisement contains, in other words how the forms of decay are present in our consumption and promotional systems. 

From public space, his work now tends towards the exploration of the economy behind leisure and domestic space.

His practice should be described through the topics present in his practice rather than through a particular medium. Nevertheless his works are mainly sculptures, installations, video works and site-specific interventions. His recent works include ‘To the attention of Anish Kapoor’ a speculative proposal sent to the artist’s studio in London, or ‘Markten’ who has been shown during Sofia Underground 2018 at the Sofia Arsenal – Museum for Contemporary Art in Bulgaria. More recently ’FREE COFFEE’ embodied the artist as the freelance of his own practice through distributing free coffee on the street. 

statement 

I worked for two years in an advertising company.

I hate advertisement.

I believe that advertising doesn’t stop at the boundaries of the poster but crops, shapes and defines public spaces in many other ways. I am interested in advertising through the commercial structures that are supporting it – both practically and ideologically. 

This translates in studying large-scale billboards implantation sites, market places and retail stores.

My disgust for ads changed in an interest I hope critical, for commercial displays and merchant relationships between individuals.

I consider advertising an obsolete strategy – yet a strategy that keeps being used. Due to the omnipresence of commercial injunctions in our urban and digital spaces, the resulting saturation in fine makes advertising invisible – and consequently unecessary. Or is it on the contrary its appearant invisibilty that keeps advertising functioning? How, and in which forms do products and promotional goods contain their own desuetude? 

The ways in which advertising and communication blends into our urban, public and digital spaces is what drives my artistic and research practice.

residency plan and current research interests

Practically, during the residency I wish to explore how cultural enterprises and supermarkets feed off each other and to pursue recent formal researches. How can advertising be sanded-down/smoothen and abstracted in order to reach the very essence of its visual language?

 I am interested in the cultural implication of supermarkets and the ways in which they shape everyday life. What occurs when a supermarket operates a museum? Can the supermarket be seen as a museum in the first place? If so, how does a supermarket run a museum? 

Since both organize the urban landscapes we live in, I work at exploring the sensorial, structural and functional similarities between the supermarket and the museum.

This interest originates from researches I conducted about the Albert Heijn’s historical museum during the MA Artistic Research at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague. The Albert Heijn museumwinkel, or museum-shop, at the ‘Zaanse Schans’ near Amsterdam is in fact a historical reconstruction of a 16th century Dutch village. The museumwinkel was build in the 1960’s as a replica of their original grocery store from 1887. 

The overlapping of cultural, touristic and economical interests retained my attention, as well as the making of historical narratives at stake in marketing and branding strategies.

At the meantime I wish to continue a series of photographic works that relate to advertising billboard sites and their physical supporting structures. How does advertising uses urban spaces, both physically and ideologically, is a recurrent question that spans through my projects and interventions – often site-specific.

recent exhibitions include

2019

Contamination and maybe even more, Fonderia 20.9. Group. Verona (IT); 

Supermarket Independent Art Fair, with Alternative Art Guide, Group. Stockholm (SE); 

All Bark No Bite, Susan Bites – Project Space, Group. The Hague (NL)

2018

ArtContest 2018, Group, Vanderborght Building, Brussels (BE); 

What Now / Now What, Sofia Underground, Group, Sofia Arsenal – Museum for Contemporary Art, Bulgaria (BG); 

The Nudist on the Late Shift, Group, Curated by Barbara Seiler & Marcel van Eeden, KABK Gallery, The Hague (NL)