MSCHF at Perrotin

MSCHF, Art 2 (installation view) (2024). Image courtesy of the artists and Perrotin. Photo: Guillaume Ziccarelli.

“Spoiler alert: you are likely to laugh out loud.” So warns the promotional material for Art 2, MSCHF’s second exhibition at Perrotin and their first in Los Angeles. “Be glad this art collective maintains a safe distance from the rules dominating the art world.”¹ The volume of your laughter will depend on your sense of humor, but the exhibition’s distance from art world protocol may be overstated, driven as the industry is by the commercial impulse present in much of the work on view.

Art objects are often positioned as something other than commodities, but in Art 2, the distinction between art and merch is purposefully vague. While MSCHF’s latest “drop” (a line of mint-flavored Candy Airpods) is sold at the front desk, previous drops have been transformed into artworks inside the gallery. Big Red Boots, the collective’s cartoon-inspired rubber footwear, are now sculptures on stumpy legs. Key4All was a collection of key fobs that granted thousands of buyers access to a single PT Cruiser, which made its way from New York to an impound lot in California. The recovered vehicle, now coated in paint, graffiti, and tinsel, is presented as Public Universal Car (2022). The social media videos made by some of its drivers, also on display, remind us that the value generated during the car’s journey to becoming an artwork was a collective endeavor, even if these collaborators each paid $19 for the privilege.

Other works also complicate our understanding of how value is produced, and who produces it, poking fun at the idea of authenticity. Possibly Real Copy Of ‘Poisson’ By Pablo Picasso (2024) consists of 250 identical wooden fish sculptures, only one of which is a Picasso original, challenging us to choose the “correct” one. Botched Masters (all 2024), meanwhile, is a collection of genuine centuries-old paintings in which faces and figures have been painted over in a purposefully naive style. In Goo Goo Ga Ga (Botched Vierge à l’Enfant terrassant le dragon), MSCHF covered the infant Jesus in a small seventeenth-century gilt-framed painting with a layer of incongruously bright paint and a cartoonish face, gambling on their ability to add to its previously established market value. GesamptKRAFTwerk (2024), a giant sculpture of a yellow slice of Kraft American cheese hung on a wall, resembles a 2022 sculpture by artist Sam Keller, though the inclusion of real cheese may be an attempt to improve on the original.² The art market, for MSCHF, is a place where authorship is always open to negotiation and remains the butt of the joke.

Although Art 2 highlights some of the blatant consumerism that permeates the art world and the capitalist economy it is embedded in, the detached irony of its works isn’t always enough to separate them from the consumer culture they purport to critique. MSCHF seems willing to bend the rules around attribution, but they strictly follow other conventions, such as the speculative financialization inherent in their attempts to drive up the price of previously released drops. Somehow, MSCHF is wearing their Candy AirPods and eating them too, satirizing art world commercialization while standing to make a lot of money from participating in it.

MSCHF: Art 2 runs from April 6–June 1, 2024 at Perrotin (5036 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90019).

MSCHF, Candy Airpods (2024). Isomalt, water, natural & artificial flavors, food coloring (water, glycerine, FD&C red #40, citric acid, sodium benzoate), cardboard, and plastic. Edition of 1,000. Image courtesy of the artists and Perrotin. Photo: Guillaume Ziccarelli.

MSCHF, Bootlegs (Red) (2024). Resin, silicone, and paint, 27 x 9.25 x 16.25 inches each. Image courtesy of the artists and Perrotin. Photo: Guillaume Ziccarelli.

MSCHF, Art 2 (installation view) (2024). Image courtesy of the artists and Perrotin. Photo: Guillaume Ziccarelli.

MSCHF, Art 2 (installation view) (2024). Image courtesy of the artists and Perrotin. Photo: Guillaume Ziccarelli.

MSCHF, Art 2 (installation view) (2024). Image courtesy of the artists and Perrotin. Photo: Guillaume Ziccarelli.

MSCHF, Possibly Real Copy Of ‘Poisson’ By Pablo Picasso (installation view) (2024). Wood and graphite, 1.25 x 4 x 0.5 inches each. Image courtesy of the artists and Perrotin. Photo: Guillaume Ziccarelli.

MSCHF, Goo Goo Ga Ga (Botched Vierge à l’Enfant terrassant le dragon) (2023). Vierge à l’Enfant terrassant le dragon (Unknown, 17th century) and oils, 8.25 x 6 inches framed. Image courtesy of the artists and Perrotin. Photo: Guillaume Ziccarelli.

Alexander Schneider is a writer and editor currently based in Los Angeles. He holds an MA in Contemporary Art Theory from Goldsmiths, University of London.

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