BigShinyThing

‘Prada Marfa’ is part of the luxury brand’s ongoing set of commissioned art projects (see also Vanessa Beecroft’s ‘nude logo’ and in-store work for Louis Vuitton). The shop sadly isn’t open for business. Berlin-based artists, Danish-born Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset of Norway, designed the installation as a “snapshot” in time meant to succumb naturally to the elements over the years. “Isn’t it fantastic that there are still a few things left that you can’t buy with your money?” artists Elmgreen and Dragset said in an e-mail from Berlin.

Nevada was the artists’ first choice for the work, but “casino owners and the porn industry… didn’t seem so hooked on contemporary art,” they wrote. After a visit to the Marfa area, the Texas location made sense, they said.

“The Texan nature, of course, also has an iconographic place in most people’s memory… That makes a great contradiction to an urban, consumer-based icon such as Prada.”

Milan-based Prada SpA has supported contemporary art for years. Miuccia Prada, the fashion house’s chief designer and granddaughter of company founder Mario Prada, selected the shoes and handbags displayed at the Marfa project. She says the work illustrates “a deep-seated anxiety, as well as an extricable link, between art and fashion.”

More like a deep-seated frustration of “look but don’t touch”.