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Ben Elliot Shop

Ben Elliot Shop is an installation that takes the shape of a concept store bringing together 45 brands and entities from the clothing, tech, food and entertainment industries, in an attempt to represent lifestyles that tend towards human enhancement and artificial intelligence.

Ben Elliot proceeds by aggregation of objects and uses their own characteristics to disseminate a general idea or concept, often polysemous, that can therefore be understood both by the art world and by wider audiences.
The project also integrates the communication and the interactions with the people and companies included in the project, their own audiences and networks, generating many content deriving from the installation.

Ben Elliot Shop, 2018. Exhibition view, Magasins généraux, Paris, France.

Ben Elliot Shop - Energized by Red Bull, 2018. Video.

Featured brands
1MORE, American Apparel, Anker, Aqua Quest, Arc’teryx, Avalon, BBryance, Champion, Click & Grow, Cobra Labs, C.P. Company, Fila, Fnatic, GORE-TEX, Gosha Rubchinskiy, Infinite, ISAORA, Liam Terror, Lil Wavi, LuMee, master-piece, Microsoft, MIT CSAIL, MIZUNO, MusclePharm, NeuroGum, Nike, OpTic Gaming, Red Bull, Red Star, SALOMON, Sennheiser, Shukyu, Soylent, Splyce, Sponser, Studio Hagel, The North Face, Tonsser, Uhlsport, Under Armour, Waviboy, Wearable X, Winter Vandenbrink, Xbox.

Ben Elliot Shop, 2018. Exhibition view @ Magasins généraux, Paris, France. - © Ben Elliot

Ben Elliot Shop was conceived during a residency at the leading communication agency BETC, where Elliot worked with many marketing services to develop a formal and conceptual balance between the communication stakes of the brands and of the artwork itself. The process of creation is thus thought in terms of collaborations, and its economic system is not limited to the patrons-collectors-galleries but also integrates other players such as advertisers, who benefit from smart advertising. By exhibiting objects in a cultural institution where they can be called artworks, Ben Elliot Shop could be considered as a simple entanglement of ready-mades. But the life cycle of the objects does not stop there. They remain buyable: they are reinjected into the consumer society and return to their original status of products.

Ben Elliot Shop, 2018. Exhibition view, Magasins généraux, Paris, France.

If only one work was to summarize the spirit of the group show Par amour du jeu 1998-2018, consider that Ben Elliot’s would make sense. Created by the visual artist of 23 years old, it takes the form of an installation whose, at first glance, does not appear as obvious art: it is a real-fake concept store in which sporting goods, energy drinks, iPhone shells, etc. are exhibited. Ben Elliot does not bother with circumlocution to clarify his approach: «Recently, most of my projects were based on a brand or a product [...]. The goal here was to spread my ideas and trigger a sponsored project from all sides, which concludes with a networking of objects, ideas and data shared through the exhibition, but also through all brands and people involved, objects and computer networks.». «Nike, Under Armour, Fila, Red Bull, etc., Ben Elliot has been talking to all of these brands alone and obtained positive answers from people not always easy to reach», says Eugénie Lefebvre, director of the art foundation.

Libération Newspaper, June 15th 2018.
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