Artie Vierkant

Artie Vierkant

Work from Exploits.

“US 6318569 B1, US 8118919 B1; (Exploits) is the first iteration of a new body of work, entitled Exploits, which will continue beyond this exhibition in various forms.

The basis for this project is intellectual property, which I seek to engage with as a material to be used as any other. Existing intellectual properties [hereafter ‘IPs’]—patents, trademarks, copyrights—are located, and a negotiation takes place between myself and the property owner for the purchase or license of said property, toward the fabrication of derivative works. The IP in question is taken as a set of negotiated guidelines within which physical works may be produced, but also as a set of norms to be deviated from. Each negotiation is unique: the property owner may set legal barriers to the contexts in which the IP can be presented, limit the amount of derivative works that may be produced to a set number, or to a period of time. Further a certain IP itself may be valid for use only within certain contexts—a Trademark specifically for apparel, for example. These stipulations are negotiated through legal counsel and manifest in each case in a unique contract between myself and the IP holder.

Intellectual property becomes within this series a symbolic object underscoring the relationship between the social structures that formalize what would otherwise be abstract (the virtual, the ‘immaterial’) and the manifestation of those structures through physical objects and imagery. The model and the depiction. In each case, the IP is one which has already been registered by another entity—Exploits is the process of locating objects which already exist as territories, and transposing said territories into another context through a transaction.

In this exhibition two pieces of intellectual property are utilized, both patents: US 6318569 B1, Detachable Storage Rack for a Metallic Structure and US 8118919 B1, Air Filter and Method of Constructing Same.

Detachable storage rack is currently otherwise sold as a product called MagnaRackTM—a shelving system utilizing rare earth magnets, largely for small refrigerator spice racks. This IP has been licensed to be presented apart from its native territory, and is used here as the formula for a series of structural abstractions: large metal surfaces cut across by magnetized shelves.
Air filter and Method is a patent for the addition of a layer of organza fabric over a window screen, with the lab- tested goal of blocking pollens, allergens, and 95% of UV ray light. Unlike Detachable storage rack, this patent is not currently monetized. Instead its owner is seeking the outright sale of the patent, to be exploited by another entity and brought into the space of retail. Following the stipulations of the patent, the screens include only a few main elements, which have been produced faithfully for this exhibition: a frame, mesh, and fabric, which “may also provide desired shading and or color for windows.”*

A screen and a shelf, respectively, two objects used predominantly as vessels to view or display other content.

These two agreements are the first to be publicly presented for this series. For each, licenses have been agreed on between myself and the property owner which enable the creation of up to 75 works over the course of the series. Rather than locate an object of appropriation—to take a cup from the marketplace to be a readymade, to download and alter an image—what is appropriated here are the structures governing production itself.

*US 8118919 B1, Air Filter and Method of Constructing Same, USPTO” – Artie Vierkant