Exhibition at L.E.L. Presents "Villa Volvo Vuffe" by C. Starck

Villa Volvo Vuffe, 2010, vax, cardboard and paint

Thoughts around the criteria for success.

The idea of becoming a "real" person in society, by the achievement of a certain success, is widespread. It creates our criteria for achieving happiness.

All societies have their ideas of certain living standards, an expectation of how the general person in society should live with only small deviations. How to achieve the "perfect life".

In the western world especially, this criteria is largely based on gaining material objects, as the title Villa vuffe Volvo (House Dog Car) suggests. Even family members become material possessions.

It becomes a surprise then when the idea of success is achieved. It is discovered to be much more complex: the idea of having a baby is not as complex as actually having to give birth and being woken up night after night. The reality includes a lot of complications as well as the feeling of achievement, and life is an ongoing thing, and to maintain the "tick the box", you have to work on it continuously.

Villa vuffe Volvo extrapolates this idea, playing with the distinction between "ideal" and "reality".

The material objects burdened with our ideals inevitably decay and run. They melt, in to a sticky substance. They take on a life of their own, in reaction to such pressure.

Objects as feelings are like a form of decay that permeates into an under ground system, its structure symbolizing that of society. Here, the structure reflects western culture's male domination and phallic symbolization, suggesting its subversion and criticism in the face of its voracious siphoning of decayed aspirations.