This installation of Pechet’s army of 500 bunny-men lives at the visual intersection between comic, uncanny, and meditative. Their rhythm encompasses the viewer by spreading from wall to wall, but their conceptual reach extends far beyond floor to ceiling. These simple cartoonish paintings provoke questions of authorship, globalization, consumerism, exploitation, and other underpinnings of a 21stcentury capitalist culture.
Although these multiples were initiated in 2013, this is their first installation in their entirety. Bill reflects;
Many friends and colleagues have asked me why they have been hidden and the best answer I can give is that I was afraid of them…imagine that, afraid of bunnies. I was afraid because, like many experiments, I was truly unsure about what the project was about and wasn’t ready to confront the conceptual underpinnings of what it meant, as a well-off westerner, to participate in an act of buying copies of my own work from people that I know are not as privileged as myself. And it raised the question of why I would have such concerns if I had no such issues around buying a computer, a pair of socks, a baseball cap or many other things that are also produced in places where a similar power-structure exists, where my purchasing power is king.
Why would the fact that it was an artwork distinguish it from my everyday participation in similar consumer activities? Are the ethics of this act nothing more than a reflection of the structure of capitalism? Or is art somehow to be judged by a different set of standards?
Event Details
Bill Pechet: Who’s There
October 28 – November 28, 2022
Bothkinds Project Space
1–140 East Cordova Street
Vancouver, BC
