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About CarteBlanche
CarteBlanche is a new luxury products company pioneering "cocaine-chic" couture. It was founded by French designers Jean-Philippe and Gaston Valeur, who have been designing products together for individual patrons for seven years. CarteBlanche redefines the boundaries between the artworld and the luxury product industry, as they are currently understood. Since Warhol, the pastiche fueled art landscape has existed as an endless circle of self-referential fashion statements. The market has flourished amidst an emperor-wears-no-clothes phenomenon; value is contrived through the vicious cycling of public visibility and private ownership. The wealthy offer validation to works that remain in the public consciousness while facilitating the spectacle of exclusivity. The act of validation itself appreciates commensurately with exclusivity and reinvigorates the work as public narrative. In the world of haute-couture, spectacular fashion events enter works into public display while offering them for ownership to an exclusive few. In the art world, critics, galleries, and artists all bow to the dollar of the collector, whose art investment becomes all the more profitable because he is a member of an an elite club of art buyers. The incestuous garbage pail of forms and images that circulate amongst these elite do not have any independent value. All that is left is the the ownership of spectacle and the spectacle of ownership.We are the first luxury product company experimenting transparently with the methodical replication of the fantastical value of the ART market. CarteBlanche inserted its Kate Moss Floor Mat into this year's Whitney Biennial in order to obviate the lack of distinction between luxury products and art, while intertwining our own history with the rich history of the Whitney. The Biennial is essentially the fashion show of the art world, a spectacular arena where salesmen can peddle their visual gimmicks to an audience of fashionable capitalists. We are not the first people to have made this observation, we are merely the first to exploit Manhattan's most prestigous marketing fair. We understand, in the most juvenile way, why the Whitney is located on Madison Avenue.Art has long broken rules for the sake of garnering attention, leaving us with few rules left to be broken. The last remaining realm to be transgressed is the legitimacy of the artworld itself. The recurring subject of our work, drug use, picks up on the tail end of the transgressive movement in art, and invokes the exclusivity of both the art and drug markets. Inflating further the value of the work, you may not purchase our products unless you have been pre-approved. We ensure only the most valuable collectors hold our limited editions. For those of you who are collectors, rest assured that your investment will continue to appreciate as the desire for our particular illusion is made manifest in full. A coup of luxury, exclusivity, and publicity is the end to which all the arts are pointing. Artworks are merely products with public patrons, and we are not afraid to embrace this revelation. To abandon the critical foundation on which the high culture precariously rests is to be left with a market that efficiently honors fame and fortune. May she with the most valuable objects win.For media inquiries, please contact:
Nikki Bonde
nikki [at] rellatio.com
1.646.736.7596
Showrooms
Next week we will begin announcing East Coast showrooms.
Official Launch Event 4/11 - Noteables
Tribeca Grand. Penthouse. Kate Moss not in attendance; she learns to live with that fact. Art snuff. Recreationals. Recreationals. Girly men. Too. Many. People. Who invited Casey "biodynamics" Johnson?
For Immediate Release
For the first time since CarteBlanche started producing, we have entered the public sphere with a portion of our work. We have done so timidly, butwith the realization that now is the opportune moment, given the current media environment. We will continue to maintain the project's main website and gallery behind closed doors, available only to pre-approved buyers. Also inside is the curated event section, plus party details and gossip.
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