ART-PRESENTATION: The Laughing Cow® 5th Collector Edition Box 2018
In preparation for the 100th anniversary of The Laughing Cow® in 2021, Lab’Bel, the Artistic Laboratory of the Bel Group, launched a series of collaborations in 2014 enlisting important contemporary artists to design a sequence of Collector’s Edition Boxes. For the third consecutive year, Lab’Bel unveils its Collector’s Edition Box at the FIAC that is held in Paris from October 18-21.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Lab’Bel Archive
The Laughing Cow® Collectors’ Edition Boxes are considered by their creators to be full-fledged works of art. Following the creations of Hans-Peter Feldmann in 2014, Thomas Bayrle in 2015, Jonathan Monk in 2016 and Wim Delvoye in 2017, German conceptual artist Karin Sander has been chosen to produce the 5th Collector’s Edition Box in 2018 entitled “1176 holes for 1 image”. Known for her pointedly conceptual works, Karin Sander works with contexts and conditions of the sites in question, be it in art institutions or in all kinds of public spaces. The design of the Collectors’ Edition Box is the artist’s view of a passing landscape seen from a train though a dot matrix pattern. On one of her journeys, Karin Sander was irritated to find a gigantic, grid-tone advertising foil stuck over a coach window that might once have afforded a fine view of the countryside which gave rise to her series “Reisebilder”. For her design, Karin Sander has chosen a dotted matrix pattern first encountered in 2015 on a train journey from Rome to Zurich,. Sander’s momentary indignation at this impertinence mutated to curiosity – resulting in the exhilarating discovery of a new, technically impacted way of grasping the outside world. The world, dissolved in these images into discrete colored points, is in a manner of speaking both the opposite and the logical consequence of Pointillism, which on the threshold to Modernism helped to establish abstract art on a scientific basis. Here Karin Sander confronts us with a mode of perception that is thoroughly determined by the contemporary logic of attention economics. As in previous years, it will be on sale for just 5 euros. At FIAC 2016 and FIAC 2017, collectors and contemporary art lovers acquired nearly 2,000 Collector’s Edition Boxes over the course of the annual three-day fair. They offer purchasers two choices: to consume the contents, or to keep them intact as collectible objects. The connection of Bel Group with art goes back to 1865 when the company “Établissements Jules Bel” was founded in Orgelet, a small village in the Department of the Jura. In 16/4/1961 his son Léon Bel registered The laughing Cow brand (La vache qui rit in French). The laughing Cow first was sold in metal tins representing a cow on four legs behind a fence on which can be read “La Vache qui rit”. In 1924, Léon Bel created a competition to bring more visibility and attractiveness to the brand and changed the logo, using a new drawing from Benjamin Rabier. The logo included the same characteristics which mark the brand’s logo today: the laugh, red coloring and mischievous gaze but also the cow’s earrings. On 2010 Lab’Bel, the Artistic Laboratory of the Bel Group was create for the support and promotion of contemporary art, open and accessible to the general public. On 2014 with the initiative of Lab’Bel, the Bel Group began its series of Collector’s Edition Boxes.
Info: The Laughing Cow® Collector Edition Box 2018, Fiac 2018, Grand Palais, Avenue Winston Churchill, Paris, Duration: 18-21/10/18, Days & Hours: Thu (18/10) 11:00-14:00 (VIP Preview) & 14:00-20:00, Fri (19/10) 12:00-20:00, Sat-Sun (20-21/10) 12:00-19:00, www.fiac.com
Media Partner
www.dreamideamachine.com