Catalogue > At random

A narrator takes you on a deep dive into the art world. What mechanisms are driving this ecosystem, or rather: which participants? The animation film "À la carte" takes a humorous look at the food chain in the art field and the challenges we face.

The artist duo consisting of Ellinor Aurora Aasgaard and Bror Sander Berg Størseth constantly serve up fresh perspectives on the world, tongue in cheek, jaws scraping off the ground. In their particular case form does not follow function, but function at least contains the word fun. The objects produced by the duo are caught in between form and function, art and design, discourse and disgust. For instance: portable paintings whose support structure doubles as shipping crates, and a mobile sculpture serving you social lubrication. Or high heeled shoes with built in brushes for an easy clean, and seats reserved for magazine covers. Aurora Sander reacts to the intrinsic structures of the art world, of socialization, distribution, value creation, judgement, and accruement, to turn some tables, but making sure the tables look damned good on the way round. The references in the work of Aurora Sander are plentiful, and the usual appropriation of low culture you traditionally would find in the art is repurposed with a refined knowledge of not just the art world, but also an interest in merchandizing and hanging out, dipping low. Their artistic strategies are closely linked to design, theater, and fashion; fields that art is struggling to keep at bay. Art historian Benjamin Buchloh describes this relationship as one where high art constantly appropriates images, strategies, and mechanisms from low culture, not in order to assimilate the two, but rather to reaffirm art's position in the hierarchy. Aurora Sander seems to confuse the hierarchy, and the identity of the duo, who might be mistaken for a singular artist, a case of mistaken identity, might range from a Disney princess to an emerging artist trying to make it in the cruel marketplace of the art world. Aurora Sander's strategy of confusion, fusion, fiction and friction, seems to be the duo's strength, making objects and creating characters that belong in the art world, but have no idea how they got there.