Nothing affects Simon Fujiwari

About the exhibition Who The Bear at the Prada Foundation in Milan
Until 27 September

In the section "Artists Representing Their Time", Simon Fujawari does not go into detail. Instead, he starts with the infinitely large and visibly zooms in before going down a level. It is only at the end of this process that he comes, for example, to exhibit a Kinder under glass. Provocation? That is not the point. For what is the most important thing in our lives, a unifying or at least common value that can define in a word our world today? Affect. For Simon, the cause is clear. And indeed affect is everywhere. In our relationships with objects as well as with the beings that surround us. In the age of the experiential, art is the first to be affected by this knockout victory of emotion over reason.

Doudouland

Charles-Arthur Boyer's article on Simon Fujiwara in Art Press is based on his "labyrinthine scenography made of recycled cardboard" presented at the Prada Foundation in Milan. The result is a loose inventory.  It is a mixture of borrowings from Alice in Wonderland, musicals and Hollywood films, as well as personal development methods and puns such as HELL and HELLO. All of this is centred around the artist's favourite 'Who Bear', who acts as a regressive mascot, providing a totemic thread for the installation. This is not Anselm Kiefer's house. But perhaps it is Fijiwara, with his crazy universe, who is right. So much for the self-righteous celebrations that are so easily resurrected by those with good feelings.

From affect to affect

Simon Fujiwara does not let his own image of an artist's dignity get in the way. He doesn't care about himself any more than he does about us. No subject appears to him a priori unworthy of his art. He does not try to choose serious themes to appear serious. And why should he?  He takes as his theme that which is greater than himself. What surrounds him, overwhelms him, encompasses him and which he can therefore call the world. He gives it the name Emotion. And the last name: Affect. All the rest is merely incidental.  Make way for totems and decerebrate icons. An installation by Simon Fujiwara is not really composed of a collection of works to freely browse through.

Subjective storytelling

The time is ripe for affect and therefore for user experience and therefore for storytelling. Is Simon Fujawari telling us stories? False question? Truth and falsity disappear in a world made of affect. And ordered according to a scenario, a journey. In the same spirit, Fujiwari makes no moral judgement on what he exhibits. Good and evil become simple "I like" and "I don't like" in an environment where marshmallow suffocates all logic. The affective is by essence subjective. This is why Simon Fujiwara's artistic universe assumes all the criticisms that can be directed at our world through it. His view of our times is a weapon that touches us by ricochet.

Intellectual bubble-gum

Illustrations: Who The Bear