An unauthorised replica of Random International’s Rain Room has been installed in Shanghai’s $15 million Jiajiale Dream Park, The Art Newspaper reports. Since the design collective’s Rain Room was shown at the Yuz Museum in 2015, imitation installations have become popular attractions in China, appearing in cities such as Beijing, Ningbo, Fuzhou, Yinchuan and Xining.
Co-founder of Random International Hannes Koch has said: ‘…It’s a bit hard to tell how many are out there, but we reckon there have been around eight to ten attempts to rip off the work by now… And that’s not including the reported Rain Room rental agency, which used everything from our name to our graphics and exhibition history’. The collective are currently assessing whether their intellectual property rights have been infringed upon.
Jiajiale Dream Park will also install an optical illusion room which is similar to Yayoi Kusama’s Dots Obsession (2003) as well as another attraction which recalls the artist’s Infinity Mirrored Rooms – Filled with the Brilliance of Life (2011) and Van Gogh’s The Starry Night (1889).
16 May 2017