VIRGIL
ABLOH
My First Time by Virgil Abloh
»The first artwork that I have ever purchased is such a profound question,
and I think the answer to such a question is almost the essence of understanding art—
what it is and what it means to society at large.«
»The first artwork that I have ever purchased is such a profound question, and I think the answer to such a question is almost the essence of understanding art – what it is and what it means to society at large.«
The first artwork that I have ever purchased is such a profound question, and I think the answer to such a question is almost the essence of understanding art—what it is and what it means to society at large. So, my formal answer is that the first artwork that I’ve purchased is a black AIR FORCE 1 sneaker.
For me, that shoe, that object, that medium is hardwired in contemporary society. It’s a sort of bridge between a sculpture and an object. It has a specific meaning to a specific community and is ubiquitous at the same time, very different from a white Air Force 1. But to understand me and how I see the world is to understand what an AIR FORCE 1 means. Where did I buy it? I bought my first pair of black Air Force 1s from Foot Locker, which to me is profound in understanding the likes and similarities that Foot Locker has to a gallery infrastructure within the art world. I think these intersections between the real world and art world are the essence of what makes our contemporary art system valuable, and in my answers, lean upon where I think the future contextualization is. If you go to a Black community in America and you wear a pair of those shoes, it’s immediately understood what they mean. But they also exist as an object that has a secondary, tertiary understanding all over the world or no understanding. And therein lies the magic of my first art purchase.
