黑料不打烊

Devon Dikeou is an artist, curator, and collector, as well as editor and publisher of zingmagazine (a magazine that takes the form of curated cultural exchanges). Working within the lineage of conceptual art, which prioritizes the idea over the artistic product, Dikeou鈥檚 systematic practice includes painting, sculpture, books, installation, photography, signs, and albums. As an artist, she continuously questions the various roles played in the art world and represents these through her varied conceptual methods, highlighting alternative artistic and historical narratives.

Please is an exhibition inspired by the last sixteen still lifes made by 19th-century modernist painter 脡douard Manet at the end of his life. Painted while dying of syphilis, the flower paintings differ greatly in their subject matter as well as their humble sizes from Manet鈥檚 iconic portraits such as Olympia (1963) and The Bar at the Folies Bergere (1882). Often overlooked, these sixteen intimate paintings caused no scandals. For this project, Dikeou set out to meticulously recreate the flowers and vases depicted in the paintings, working extensively with glass blowers and florists to fabricate 鈥渟culptures鈥� of the flowers in vases. She then photographed these bouquets and printed them to the exact dimensions of Manet鈥檚 intimate paintings. One of Dikeou鈥檚 artistic interventions comes in the form of uniformly selecting the background of her photographs and not matching them to Manet鈥檚 originals. On view in the exhibition are the sixteen photographs, ten exact replicas of the glass vases (though there are sixteen paintings, it appears that some vases make repeat appearances in Manet鈥檚 paintings), and jars filled with the dried blooms from the bouquets. Deriving the title of her exhibition from an essay on Manet by art critic Peter Schjeldahl, Dikeou focused on the manner in which the author describes the painter as a man who simply wanted to please his viewers while simultaneously tackling subjects of wealth, remembrance, love, sex, death, and loss. Dikeou plays with the notion of pleasing her viewer as well, questioning the roles of artist, collector, viewer and, perhaps most directly, the context of the work today.