Magnito commercial. Speculations on the edge of the art shop

Magnito, not some ordinary refrigerator magnet, is a character ("ceci n'est pas un aimant, peut-être plutôt un amant"). One of the refrigerators is not a refrigerator ("ceci n'est pas un réfrigérateur"). The edge of the shop is the edge of another readymade. Ambient installation "Magnito Commercial. Speculations on the Edge of the Art Shop" at MNdAC includes the installation-object "Magnito. Speculations on the Edge of the Refrigerator", created at CNDB (2008). MNdAC is for Magnito a masculine space of dissemination, as CNDB was a feminine space of gestation. The subject of the project, i.e. magnetism as substance of the world, as anima, as medium and at the same time as channel of communication, leaves room for absolute generality and therefore the particular is very easy to integrate here. Magnito, as a persona, talks about everything, yet manages to define a psycho-social profile of an autochthonous character, as a Romanian identity and, on the other hand, as the identity of the artist. Magnito (meaning by "Magnito" every small-scale concept, but also the concept of the global installation) uses in his expression the mechanisms of hypertext and divergent metaphor, describing himself as imago mundi. The whole construction is a kind of mandala, a drawing in concentric layers, with the interior of the refrigerator as its core, each time containing the immediate spatial context in which it is located, as well as the world in which we find ourselves, including the Milky Way. This time there are three core-microcosms: a functional refrigerator, a ready-made and in addition, the containing meta-core of the exhibition, the shop itself, with the exterior inverted, turned inside out like a glove.

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The project primarily approaches the notion of concept in art and design and addresses various theoretical or pragmatic categories and relationships, such as: shop/museum, commercial/non-commercial, aesthetic/utilitarian, mass-produced/unique handmade product, art/design, mass-produced/prototype, artwork/replica, reproduction/design object, painting/print, traditional technique/digital technique and technology, with multiplicable, intervenable outcome, conceptual art, concept, installation/curatorial project, contextual installation, exhibition contexts, curatorial context, adaptability, itinerant project, scale of representation.