Marco Evaristti, a Danish artist born in Chile, is most famous for his work Helena featuring functional blenders containing live goldfish. He is also famous in Denmark because of several lawsuits against him and his provocative artworks.
The most recent example (dr.dk, May 3rd) is Evartistti being charged with cruelty to animals in Austria, because of an exhibition of his most famous work, the goldfish in blenders. The same thing happened at his first exhibition of the goldfish at Trapholt art gallery in Denmark back in 2000. However, some people (including myself) think Evaristti’s work is brilliant. In fact, as the photo below shows, the National Danish Gallery (Statens Museum for Kunst) has bought a piece of Helena.
Why is Evaristti’s art brilliant? Because art should be provocative! Helena is a work of art that gives us the choice of pushing a button and killing the goldfish – or not. In real life, humans do a lot worse things to animals, but because it’s displayed as art, it demands instant attention and response. The goldfish in the blender forces us to take a position on the limits of art, and it even invites us to interact (or choose not to interact) with the artwork itself.
[...] he says. Using the label “genre” to the works of contemporary Danish artists like Marco Evaristti, Kristian von Hornsleth, and Michael Brammer, means that Nørgaard is not particularly impressed by [...]
[...] 5th, 2007 by malouette The Danish artist Marco Evaristti (previously mentioned here) has been arrested (again!) – this time on the Mont Blanc, where he is creating his Mont Rouge [...]