(Gabrovo, Bulgarien 1935–2020 New York)
Orange Store Front (Project), 1965, signed, dated, titled and inscribed Christo 65 Orange Store Front 9F5” x 8F.5x 24”, collage: fabric, charcoal, oil, galvanized metal, with staple clamps on cardboard, 76.6 x 57.4 cm, in plexiglass box

This work is registered in the Christo and Jeanne Claude Archive, New York.

We are grateful to the Christo and Jeanne Claude Archive, New York, for their kind assistance in cataloguing this work.

Provenance:
Locksley Shea Gallery, Minneapolis
Miles & Shirley Fiterman Collection, New York
Burkhard Eikelmann Galerie, Dusseldorf
Private Collection North Rhine-Westphalia

While Christo and Jeanne Claude were still living in Paris in 1963, they bought small suitcases at the flea market, which they staged using various fabrics, paper, and sometimes lighting, lining the inside with soft fabrics such as satin or silk. These small showcases form the basis for the later artistic expansion of individual facades, which ultimately led to the comprehensive three-dimensional design of entire rooms. Store Fronts is one of the best known, pioneering series that made an important contribution to an era in which many artists questioned the concept of space and the construction of the artwork as elements of time, place and subject.

While visitors were able to enter some of the constructed spaces, they were explicitly kept away from others. The playful tension between inside and outside, between expectation and disillusionment, was taken to the extreme through the trick that the Store Fronts themselves were always exhibited in closed rooms and tied the viewer to an uncanny state of suspension: the shutters were closed, the interior inaccessible and although you had to remain outside, you were still also inside (similar to the facades on film sets).

This rejection of functionality is a recurring theme in the works of both artists. A wrapped telephone is obviously unsuitable for making a call. A covered window blocks the view of sales items or the outside world. A locked door prevents people from entering or leaving. By wrapping or sealing, Christo and Jeanne-Claude separate us from familiar, everyday objects, situations and routines that are denied to us. It is therefore logical that Christo and Jeanne-Claude not only explored how spaces are created, but also how existing (interior) spaces can be manipulated.