Blue and Joy – The Superficial Essence of a Deep Appearance

You may remember in May that we featured the work of Blue and Joy – once seen not forgotten.  Their new exhibition is currently underway at the Artra Gallery in Milan, Italy. They have been kind enough to give us permission to share these pictures with you, just in case Milan is a little too far for a trip for you at short notice.

Altogether, the installation is made up of four million pills.  A million of them make up enormous mosaics on the wall and the other three million (or so, did they count them all?) make up the floor’s multi-colored carpet. Blue and Joy is the creation of a duo of Italian born Berlin based artists. Fabio La Fauci and Daniele Sigalot joined forces at the end of 2005 and since then have been making something of a name for their immense media project.

The Superficial Essence of a Deep Appearance has provoked a lot of thought in the Kuriositas household and for more than one reason.  First, the mosaics.  Speech bubbles with no speech - a question mark and an exclamation mark surround a third with, simply, dot dot dot contained within.  It is almost as if the art is reacting to itself or is it reacting to us reacting to it?

Then there are the pills on the floor, a rainbow of them.  This deep carpet of pills (which do who knows what?) are perhaps a metaphor for how something profound can, on further inspection, be quite artificial – life immediately springs to mind.  I am left wondering whether the pills are artificial or placebo. Although it would probably involve moonlight and dancing, there may be trouble ahead.

Do you remember Ai Weiwei's Sunflower Seeds in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall? They had to be removed because of the dust they created which those visiting the installation then ingested.  One can only hope that Blue and Joy’s latest creation is made up of pills containing nothing more than talcum powder.  Otherwise the residents of the city of Milan might soon be going on a collective trip themselves!

See more of Blue and Joy's work at their website.  For more information about The Superficial Essence of a Deep Appearance, please visit the Artra Gallery website.