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Arts & Culture

Ikea Furniture = The New Brillo Box?

Pop Art-Star Andy Warhol rejoiced the aesthetic value of commodities

Ikea Furniture = The New Brillo Box?
Ryan Blackwell, End Table, 2012, modified hollow core furniture, mending plates, hardware, 21.5 x 19.25 x 2 inches (All photos courtesy of Bart Kosc for Bushwick Daily)

Ikea Furniture = The New Brillo Box?

Pop Art-Star Andy Warhol rejoiced the aesthetic value of commodities

Ikea Furniture = The New Brillo Box?
Ryan Blackwell, End Table, 2012, modified hollow core furniture, mending plates, hardware, 21.5 x 19.25 x 2 inches (All photos courtesy of Bart Kosc for Bushwick Daily)
Ryan Blackwell, End Table, 2012, modified hollow core furniture, mending plates, hardware, 21.5 x 19.25 x 2 inches (All photos courtesy of Bart Kosc for Bushwick Daily)

Pop Art-Star Andy Warhol rejoiced the aesthetic value of commodities. Without manipulation or modification, he merely proclaimed an object’s uselessness and transformed products, like Brillo boxes into Brillo Boxes (1964). Fast-track to today, looking good is just as important for products as it is for mingling Bushwick socialites. The plethora of products, the multiplicity of commodities, wages a war in the name of quality despite quantity. A fine line divides beautiful design and beauty for its own right. In the name of art, the diverging point is its purpose for the people—its useful, or useless-ness.

For contemporary artist Ryan Blackwell , making useful products useless does not denounce their existence, but uplifts their function to the realm of the aesthetic. Blackwell transposes the ubiquitous into the…

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