Never will I forget Cyril Duval’s Samurai armory suit made out of deconstructed fake Louis Vuitton bags back in 2008. It was exhibited in Parisian concept store Collette as part of the SWAP show. Subsequently Louis Vuitton threatened to sue Cyril and forced Colette on the 5th day to close down the 6-day exhibition, claiming the artwork would encourage the fraudulent market of creating fake duplicates. Thankfully the days of the ‘it’-bag phenomenon are pretty much over by now, while big designs houses at the moment are more invested in hiring the next ‘it’-designer (read: Alexander Wang for Balancing) to increase more revenue.

In the mean time (and thankfully) French born, New York based artist Cyril Duval (also known under the moniker Item Idem) has been strutting a long elegantly, producing an amount of conceptual work that will spin your head 5 times around – please check out his fantastic re-appropriated e-commerce website. The conceptual work consistently plays with the image industry of art, marketing and fashion -– reconstructing, deconstructing and reassembling its references into a voice that crucifies the ‘realness’ within the respected disciplines. Item Idem could be considered a modern day Dadaist. In his recent collaboration with avant-garde art and food magazine White Zinfandel, he teams up with video director Cycy Sanders for a Greco-Roman inspired faux-cinematic trailer staring conceptual artist, film director and competitive eating champion Takeru Kobayashi. Kobayashi had won several records in the Guinness Book of Records, while eating 110 hot dogs (without bun) in 10 minutes or 10 Hamburgers in 3 minutes,… to name a few. In the trailer Hunger, Kobayashi leisurely poses on a chaise longue in laurel wreath and tunic while fed grapes by scarcely dressed servants – the scene made me think of the bathing scene in the 1984 ‘Welcome To The Pleasure Dome’ by Frankie Goes To Hollywood. With an ominous tone the scene continuous, Kobayashi slowly but gradually in voracious manner eating all the grapes he can, until he climaxes. Duval’s approach “Kobayashi exists as a superstar in his own parallel world and I wanted to bring his stature as a celebrity athlete into different spheres.”

Item Idem, 2008

Item Idem ‘Rei Of Light’, 2009