Art Rebels Who Made ‘Jesus Shoes’ and ‘Satan Shoes’: A Sneak Peek Inside

The world’s first exhibition by MSCHF (MSCF), a group of artists causing global controversy by calling their playful actions “art,” is opening at the Daelim Museum in Tongui-dong, Seoul.

The exhibition MSCHF: NOTHING IS SACRED, which opened on the 10th, is a large-scale retrospective encompassing over 100 works in various fields, such as interactive games, objects, paintings, and performances by the rogue artist MSCHF. Based in New York, MSCHF is an artist group founded by Gabriel Whaley, Kevin Wiesner, Lucas Bentel, and Steven Tetrault in 2019. With the group expanding from the initial four to currently 30, it’s more fitting to call them an “art enterprise.”

MSCHF’s works constantly stir up controversy. Their representative work, “C&D Grand Prix,” involved selling clothes using the logos of eight major companies, including Coca-Cola, Disney, Amazon, Tesla, Subway, Microsoft, Walmart, and Starbucks, intentionally infringing on their trademarks. They told buyers, “The first company to warn us to stop infringing on their trademark is the winner,” promising, “We’ll give an additional winner’s hat to those who bought clothes with the winner company’s logo.” Subway was the first company to send a warning. In this Daelim Museum exhibition, the clothes produced through this process and the warning sent by Subway, the “winner,” are on display together. It’s a humiliation for the companies, but from the perspective of MSCHF, the buyers, and the visitors, it’s a ‘collaborative exhibition’ created by everyone, including the companies.

Among the works featured in this retrospective, the “Jesus Shoes” made using Nike sneakers are also a topic of discussion. The creators put holy water from the Jordan River in the shoe soles and named the work “Jesus Shoes,” claiming it was a “sneaker collaboration with Jesus.” Next to these sneakers, another pair of black Nike sneakers is on display. These “Satan Shoes” sneakers are a limited edition with only 666 pairs worldwide. The soles contain not holy water but a drop of human blood.

There are no sanctuaries in provocation. In 2021, MSCHF bought Andy Warhol’s 1964 work “Fairies” for $20,000 and sold 999 replicas identical to the original. Of the 1,000 pieces, only one was the original by Andy Warhol, but both the original and the replicas sold out. Through this process, MSCHF asks, “What value does the original have in a world where you can’t distinguish between the original and the replica?”

MSCHF’s bold provocations are opening the wallets of a younger generation tired of the art market considered ‘their own league.’ A blurry figure of a stack of money, created to experiment with the end of impulse buying, sold out in just a few minutes. A Louis Vuitton bag smaller than a grain of salt, which can only be seen under a microscope, was auctioned off more than four times its original price ($63,000). Sandals made by deconstructing the leather of a Hermès Birkin bag were also sold for around $75,000.

This exhibition marks MSCHF’s world-first museum debut. The Daelim Museum explained, “We discovered MSCHF while researching materials together to create an exhibition with Daelim’s unique color, as many other public and social institutions are showcasing great exhibitions.”

This strategy of differentiating from other museums focusing on bringing in masterpieces has resonated with the MZ generation. Since the MSCHF exhibition, dozens of young visitors have been waiting to enter the museum before it opens at 11 a.m. A Daelim Museum official said, “We have not set a limit on the number of visitors, so many visitors are coming from the weekend,” adding, “Through this exhibition, we hope that visitors will experience their unique perspective that ‘nothing in the world is untouchable.'”

By. Seo Ji Hye