ArtBoom

The ArtBoom is a compilation of images of the art network that Yucef Merhi has been doing since he started to show in galleries and museums. It embodies a genealogical tree where every person he'd met has been classified by its profession and connected depending on how was introduced to him. All the portraits have been taken with a wristwatch camera prototype since 1999 until the present. As an on-going project, the ArtBoom is updated almost every day.

The ArtBoom works in several ways, and can be understood from different perspectives. When the project was initiated it became a sort of blog that transcended time and space. People are connected by how they got introduced to Merhi and not when or where (excepting some cities, which are also icons). Artists, curators, critics, collectors, designers, musicians, and actors from all over the world are connected here. Many times it happens that these individuals are also related to other people in the ArtBoom, showing how small the art world can be. Nam June Paik, Louis Bourgeois, Bill Viola, Mariko Mori, Ernesto Neto, Fred Wilson, Jenny Holzer, Christiane Paul, Dan Cameron, and Harrison Ford, are some names from a vast list that figure in the ArtBoom. It is an Internet Project, a database, a performance, a tracking device, a tool to visualize social networks. The ArtBoom is the creative people of our time, the known and the unknown cultural producers that are making our contemporary art history.

Using a novel device, like a wristwatch camera, Merhi has been able to seduce and capture the attention of all kinds of persons. It was interesting the way Mary Boone , for example, modeled in front of the microscopic lens of the wristwatch and soon after introduced him to Chuck Close. It has a similar approach to Warhol's practice when he had to be at openings and social events: it's like always working. In this sense, the art world is the raw material of the ArtBoom. Amusement, paranoia, vanity, confidence, are some of the reactions that take place when someone is asked to be photographed with this unusual device.

Randomness plays a major role in the constitution and evolution of the ArtBoom. Every time a new faces is included, the html tree changes. Sometimes, an entire branch has to be reorganized or moved in order to include one single person. Chaos, randomness, and instability, are immanent elements of this project. Its process making reminds some methods applied by Dada, the Surrealists, Fluxus, and John Cage. The ArtBoom is also a poetic act, where time is translated into identities, where the artist's studio is nothing but a wristwatch camera.

External link

• The ArtBoom