In “Take Me (I'm Yours)” works can be touched, used, or changed; they can be consumed or worn; purchased and even taken free of charge, or carried off in exchange for some personal item.
The exhibition is also a project that continues to evolve and be transformed. At “Take Me (I'm Yours),” the public can not only take home one of the thousands of copies of each work—helping to physically empty out the space—but alter the appearance of the show by taking part in performances where the interaction may involve an experience rather than an object, in keeping with the notion of immateriality that increasingly pervades both art and everyday life.
Presented for the first time in 1995 at the Serpentine Gallery in London—and in varying iterations in Paris, Copenhagen, and New York from 2015 on—the exhibition grew out of a series of conversations between curator Hans Ulrich Obrist and artist Christian Boltanski about the need to rethink how artworks are shown. Specifically, the project concept began with Quai de la Gare (1993), a Boltanski piece made up of piles of used clothing that visitors could pick out and carry off in a bag printed with the word “Dispersion”: a work innately destined to scatter and vanish.
In Milan, alongside Christian Boltanski's Dispersion, the works of over forty artists will be installed in the thousand-square-meter Shed at Pirelli HangarBicocca, also popping up outside the exhibition space with projects for the catalogue, bookshop, and web. “Take Me (I'm Yours)” therefore becomes a vast arena for imagining a more direct, engaging way to experience art, where the idea of giving and receiving helps us look at the broader social and historical picture of our time in a different light.
In addition to the exhibition at Pirelli HangarBicocca, Museo Nacional de Arte Decorativo in Buenos Aires is presenting another version of “Take Me (I'm Yours)” (From 14 September 2017 to 5th November 2017), curated by Christian Boltanski and Hans Ulrich Obrist.
