This exhibition consists of three parts: a reproduction, a title and a catalogue. The reproduction is of the painting ‘Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, Red’ (1966) by Ellsworth Kelly. It was reproduced in actual size using 150 colour sheets of A4 paper. The title of the exhibition, Kelly 1:1, was inscribed on the opposite wall on the same scale. The catalogue consists of 150 sheets of A4 paper of the same type and colour as those on the wall but instead bound as a book. ‘In a society that seems obsessed by representations of reality we thought it interesting to investigate the opposite’, writes Experimental Jetset in their commentary on the exhibition Kelly 1:1 Here the position of the designer as artist has been carried through very consistently. Kelly 1:1 is both an investigation into how the concepts of reality and representation relate to each other, and what an exhibition today can mean. This project presents an exhibition as an artwork, as reproduction, as performance and as a catalogue in one. The catalogue with the seemingly endless sequences of coloured pages seems absurd as book, but can also be read as a commentary on the painting that is reproduced here in full-scale, composed of different parts. What remains of the experience of an artwork when not the scale but the perspective is reduced? How do the two media relate, exhibition and book, both containing exactly the same information? Is the difference between original and reproduction still significant if a reproduction can attain the status of autonomous artwork? The posing of such questions is perhaps more interesting than finding definite answers. Experimental Jetset’s media project is an intelligently formulated question.
