Photo courtesy Nils Stærk Contemporary Art

Miriam Bäckström, "Kira Carpelan" (2006), film still

Photo courtesy Galleria Zero

Installation view of the Galleria Zero booth, with work by Cezary Bodzianowski and Christian Frosi

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Despite the stark formal contrast between the works by the Danish trio known as Superflex (Bjornstjerne Reuter Christiansen, Jakob Fenger, and Rasmus Nelson, who also have a sculptural installation in Art Unlimited) and the Swedish artist Miriam Backstrom, art dealer Nils Staerk, whose 10-year-old Copenhagen gallery showed in the 2004 Art Statements, found a persuasive correlation between their subject matter. Superflex’s Rebranding Denmark (€38,000, edition of 3) is a neon-LED sign of the burning of the Danish flag in the wake of the 2006 “Muhammad Cartoon Crisis” that sparked boycotts from Islamic communities. Wallpaper magazine co-founder Tyler Brule considered the event “an image worth millions to the brand Denmark.”

Backstrom’s video and photographs also address the issue of branding—in this case, that of artists, and her own personal identity, in particular. In a conceptual conceit, she invited an art student at Stockholm’s Konstfack (University College of Arts, Crafts and Design) to create an entire exhibition for a Swedish gallery, while Backstrom would take credit for it. The show was titled “Kira Carpelan by Miriam Backstrom.”

Backstrom produced a series of portraits and a video (€48,000, edition of 5) of Carpelan during the yearlong period of producing the show. The work interrogates the effects of this manipulative scenario on the emerging artist.

Staerk summarizes the point of juxtaposition between the two works in his Art Premiere show as follows: “What does a brand mean? What influence does that have?”

It’s a fitting question for this flashpoint in the increasing commercialization of art.