Store – a Matsune & Subal production

Store is a unique performance art piece located in the lower east side. This piece takes place over four days where the viewer can buy different performances in the skeleton on an abandoned storefront. Matsune and Subal are two artists who are selling their pieces in a marketable atmosphere. Daily object such as rolls of masking tape, sugar cubes and coffee filters are the only props they use as they try to attain fine art. The viewer is able to buy and then experience the performance once it has been chosen from the selections on a menu. Some of the options were sold out while others were said to be “a very, very good choice” or “hmm, that one is not so good” much like suggestions a waiter might give their dining patron. Through their tongue in cheek humor, the pair provides a few minutes of entertainment while still making a commentary about the business side of the art world.

Two of the menu choices included interacting with the public, whether it was an individual from the audience or the community from the local streets surrounding the store. After purchasing “Wall Street Waste”, the two artists lead the audience outside as they assemble a line of sugar cubes across a street while cars begin to back up waiting to pass down the street. Once the line of cubes was in place, Subal signals for the line of cars to continue down the street, crushing the cubes of sugar as they pass. “Eraserhead” consisted of Subal becoming a figure artist as he sketched the portrait of an audience member. His student, Matsune, then took his sketch and re-sketched her portrait on top of the original only using an eraser. The finished product was an envelope of eraser shavings that once depicted a portrait of the woman. The end products of most of their pieces are broken down remnants of their performance, much like the set in which they perform. Their piece entitled “the easiest way to watch twenty two dollars disappear” is a prime example of the final product that they produce. It is important to consider that the viewer is walking away from the store with the memory of the humoristic antidotes, yet there is no solid artwork that the customer purchases. “Store is a shop. Art is business. Come and buy!” is the slogan from the show’s flyer and it says it all. Using physical money to begin the process of making art shows the extreme tie that art has developed in connection with the economy. In today’s society art is made as a commodity, the creative aspect and process need to be taken out of the monetary form and relished, much like the store has provided.