Artists such as Pipilotti Rist, Olafur Eliasson, Matthew Barney and Mariko Mori are part of a new elite who act as creative directors and project managers. They outsource ideas to teams and companies that manufacture an array of installations, environments, performances, and sculptures. These are delivered to global art institutions, which are constantly hunting for novel interactions and experiences that are presented to mass markets. The success of this arrangement has generated substantial financial benefits for these practitioners and has enabled them to marshal considerable economic and creative resources. This has in turn generated new confidence and fuelled ever more grandiose and ambitious projects.
Mariko Mori’s recent sculptures at Deitch Projects exemplified this trend. They were indeed the product of astonishing ambition, and unreservedly announced that the artist works at the high end of the luxury art market. Mori’s conceptual aspirations were also impressive as her five sculptures boldly claimed to present a universal confluence of mystical pasts and magical futures that contained complex spiritual and scientific dimensions. The works referred to rituals and beliefs associated with life cycles and the transmigration of souls held by cultures like the ancient Celts and the Jomon. Mori also placed a futuristic spin on these elements, and her major piece, Tom Na H-iu, actually transmitted cosmological neutrinos recorded by the Super Kamiokande observatory in Japan.
As always, Mori’s work is slick and no expense is spared in attaining the highest quality production values that the New York art scene expects. On entering the main space one came upon a kind of sanctuary-cum-domicile called Flatstone (2006). This consisted of white stepping-stones that were placed around a central circle and ceremonial urn. It resembled