Virgil Abloh “PAY PER VIEW” Opening Reception (2018)

Our remake of a flip-dot sign, commissioned by Virgil, was shown in this exhibition. At the opening reception, we took a photo with Virgil and met Takashi Murakami, who runs the gallery, for the first time.

We told Murakami how, years ago, we had gone all the way to the library of Tokyo University of the Arts in Ueno to read his doctoral thesis, “On ‘the Meaning of the Meaninglessness of Meaning’ in Art” (1993), and copied it out by hand. The thesis is about art: freeing art, which had survived by being given meanings, from meaning, so that it regains the power of its own precariousness. Even so, for those of us who make things, it is a text we keep coming back to.