To date, Grimes has not sold its visual art through traditional channels. (File)
This week, musician Grimes will kick off her first fine art exhibit at simultaneous online exhibits at Gallery Platform Los Angeles (May 28 to June 3) and Maccarone Los Angeles (May 28 to August 31).
The singer, whose real name is Claire Boucher and who talks about “C” in conversation, sells drawings, prints, photographs and conceptual pieces that she has produced over the past decade in a show called Selling Out. . “I did art 10, 12 years before I hit a keyboard,” she explains during a recent Zoom video call, wearing a Rodarte sweatshirt and a headband with rabbit ears. that she had during a Korean spa treatment. “Above all, I see myself as a visual artist, and I’ve always felt strange that people know me for music.”
The prints, drawings, photographs and other works, she says, are a continuation, rather than a departure from, her music. In some works of art, the link is simple: the aesthetic preference of Grimes, which she describes as “an animated and animated horror”, can be seen in the clips from 2012 Genesis. It is clearly evident in prints such as Seldon Crisis of 2016 ($ 500), a series of portraits and animals resembling collages that draws heavily from the manga for stylistic reference.
Other pieces are more subtle and include reflections on his life as a public figure. One of these works, also entitled Sell, is a legal document by which the buyer acquires a percentage of the soul of Grimes.
When she started designing Selling Out, the artwork, “I didn’t want anyone to buy it, so I said we just had to make it $ 10 million and it didn’t probably wouldn’t sell. ” After hiring her lawyer to draft a sales contract, “the more we went deeper, the more philosophically interesting it became,” she said. “Also, I really wanted to collaborate with my art lawyer. The idea of fantastic art in the form of legal documents seems very intriguing to me.”
As the Covid-19 coronavirus closings pushed the global economy into a recession, valuing her soul for millions of dollars has become a more loaded choice than she had originally anticipated. “With the current state of the world, would you like to save something for $ 10 million?” she asks rhetorically. Finally, it chose a “best offer” price, leaving the public to decide its value.
Artistic origins
Until now, Grimes was not known as a good artist. She designed her album covers and touring products, and collaborated with her brother Mac Boucher on her music videos. But when she became famous, she said that she always made art for her own pleasure.
Likewise, she says that she is deeply involved in the world of digital art. “I feel annoyed when people approach digital art or video games with disdain,” she says. “Some of the most thrilling, moving, and shocking artistic experiences I have had in recent years have been in video games.”
Even though she recently had a child with billionaire Elon Musk (the child’s name is XA-12, but she says she calls him “Little X”) Grimes says that “gallery art has always been prohibitive. “
She regularly buys prints and original designs from Patreon, a membership platform for people in the creative fields. She says her purchases are “10 or 15 dollars a month”. When asked if the people she supports know that their art is acquired by a superstar singer, she replies: “Probably not, my e-mail [address] is really strange. “
Selling art
To date, Grimes has not sold its visual art through traditional channels. The only exception is when, 15 years ago, she was paid $ 600 to paint a mural on the side of a Montessori school in Vancouver. “At the time,” she said, “I thought I hit the jackpot.”
As a result, his art has a modestly compared price.
“The price is really linked to the production costs,” explains Michele Maccarone, the Los Angeles merchant who is increasingly known for his collaborations beyond the world of traditional art. (A recent exhibit was sponsored by Pornhub.) “I didn’t want it to be overly expensive,” says Maccarone. “I evaluated it logically, in terms of an emerging artist who has no history” of sales.
The exhibition is divided into several levels. The prints are in editions of 30 and cost $ 500. Next are the ink drawings on Grimes paper, which range from $ 2,000 to $ 3,000. Finally, there are pigment prints from archives of digital works featuring “WarNymph”, a digital avatar scanned from the body of Grimes; she created it with her brother Mac and started it at the end of January. The avatar has its own Instagram and Twitter feeds, and Grimes plans to age it, kill it, and regenerate it over time. Avatar prints range from $ 5,000 to $ 15,000, depending on size. All art is not signed but comes with a certificate of authenticity.
A video work, called AI Meditations Led by WarNymph, lasts approximately seven minutes. It is told by the WarNymph avatar and presents it, which guides the viewer through a series of meditations. The price of this work has not yet been fixed.
Looking forward
Initially, the WarNymph avatar was born, says Grimes, as an alternative to photo shoots. The shootings are “very emotional”, she explains. “Can you get into that size zero? Can this random makeup artist make you look good? Oh no, you look awfully terrible. And then there are flashing lights and 20 people see you naked – it’s is actually like psychological torture in many ways. “
The whole process, she continues, “doesn’t seem valid, but it is, because people get involved with the pop star.” However, she adds, “we see pop stars madly all the time”.
By creating a digital version of herself, she said, the digital version could support at least some of the fame. “Especially while being pregnant,” she says. “We had to abandon this album [Miss Anthropocene]. We committed to it, but it was becoming more and more physically difficult. “
The WarNymph series and the title track, Selling Out, represent an attempt by Grimes to tackle the burden of glory head-on while simultaneously advancing his entire artistic practice toward the fine arts.
“We would certainly like to be able to spend more time doing this,” she said. “Mac and I obsessively consume technology and the possibilities of [digital art] just get exponentially crazier. So if it is reasonable to get into this world in a more serious way, we would like to do it. “
