Box Vox

packaging as content

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June 8, 2010

Helmut Smits’s Drum Kit (& other package-related works)

Drum-kit Drum Kit, 2003 (tin cans, metal wire)

“Helmut Smits is a multidisciplinary visual artist based in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.”

Not all of Helmut Smits’ work is package-related, but enough so that, if I were a more patient and strategic man, I could cherry-pick images from his web site to feature here—one at a time—for quite a while. Instead, I’m presenting them as I found them—all at once.

GallonofOil_the-real-thingOn On left: “0.26 Gallon of Oil” 2007 (1L Coca-Cola bottle filled with oil) Photo by Lotte Stekelenburg; on right: “The Real Thing” 2006 (An installation to filter Coca-Cola into clean drinking water.) Photo by Rick Messemaker

Above are two separate works from 2006 and 2007 that each involve Coca-Cola. When I look at these now, in 2010, because of what’s going on right now with the on-going BP oil spill, I cannot help but associate both of these artworks with that.

“I liked the fact that oil looks the same as Coca-Cola. One is: the product that America dominates the world with [Coca-Cola], the other is: the product that America consumes the most worldwide [oil].”

–Helmut Smits from an interview in Chief Magazine, Issue #7

The Coke bottle full of oil, I had assumed, was a reference to the petroleum used to make PET bottles. Like Luis Camnitzer’s “Coca Cola Bottle filled with a Coca Cola Bottle” here, too, a bottle that contains what it is made of. This, of course, is exactly the sort of negative connotation—(conflating Coke with crude oil)—that Coca-Cola was hoping to address with their recent “PlantBottle™” initiative.

In “the Real Thing” Smits ironically treats Coca-Cola as if it were polluted water—an impurity to be removed so that the water can be made “clean” enough for drinking again. (I’m guessing that, for the foreseeable future, Smits will not be one of those artists, invited by Coca-Cola to design a “limited edition” designer bottle.)

Below, Smits takes a more benign view of “roll-on” deodorant packaging…

(Several more of Helmut Smits works, after the fold…)

Football-stadium“Football Stadium” 2002 (fruit crate boxes, fruit, wood, stands, halogen work lights, grass carpet) Photo (overall shot) by Madeleine Heijmans

Some imaginary, unspecified sporting event, attended by fruit?—or a produce display designed to exclude customers?

Lamp-trophy-cabinetOn left: “Joppie Light” 2006 (packaging, threaded end for lighting, light socket, electrics) Photo by Rick Messemaker; on right: “Trophy Cabinet” 2005 (packaging, cable ties, wood, perspex, acrylic glass)

Packaging made into lamps and trophies—upcycling for a practical purpose, on the one hand—(illumination)—and for symbolic, commemorative purposes, on the other… but commemorating what?

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

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