Then tell us about it!
Perhaps this is merely one of the challenges of housing a piece of unstructured art within the structure of a gallery, which is, after all, a business with schedules, liabilities, and protocols to consider. It is not a novel problem for the artists of The Free Store. Offered the opportunity to hold a freeshop at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, they found themselves in a creative conflict with museum administrators, who insisted that visitors to the shop still pay the museum entrance fee or, at the very least, request the free, museum-café-visitor pass. Because this would clearly “put a framework on the experience,” the artists had to decline the coveted space.
Most predisposing of all, of course, is the history of free stores themselves. As Fries and Sakowski readily admit, they aren’t doing anything with their Chicago-area shops that hasn’t been done before elsewhere. Free stores have existed for the last fifty years, serving as a form of artistic revolt against many different things, but they have always protested something. Some causes are clearly tied to free stores through historical precedent, bucking the conventions of capitalism or praising the sustainability of recycling, for example. Any visitor to The Free Store, at least with some working knowledge of art history or popular culture, will find it’s nearly impossible for a framework not to wrap itself around the installation before he or she even sets foot in the door.
While The Free Store may fail to present its visitors with the unstructured, unadulterated experience it seeks to do, it certainly makes an impact. The space offers something rare and addictive, an environment unlike any other, where consideration and selfishness, eccentricity and order play an equal part. Time spent in exhibit is strangely intimate—flipping through pornographic magazines, reading family Christmas cards, and touching a stranger’s hospital slippers are voyeuristic acts committed in public, and without scrutiny. It’s a strange and thrilling experience made more precious by the temporary nature of the installation: Hordes of patrons have repeatedly visited the exhibit during its six-week run; and “the people who come back to the store,” Sakowski says, “they become protective of it.” For many, then, despite its opaque purposes and transparent inadequacies, the “art” of The Free Store is right on the money.
