Project of the Week: Office Work

IdeaMe is an online platform, which helps creators, be they inventors, artists, or designers, among others, to finance their projects through crowd funding. The Indy features and promotes one project every week with the aim of helping the creators achieve their dreams.

The clash between the conventional culture of an office and the quirky world of art seems clear. An office is comprised of desks and runs on computers. It demands a tactful social sense, a white-collared dress code and it offers security in its predictability. In contrast, an artist´s world is bohemian and less certain. The artist defies etiquette in the name of creation and often produces projects without any semblance of routine.

A series of collages entitled ¨Office Work¨ by Lucas Mussu, however, show that artistic creativity and workplace responsibility are not necessarily at odds.

During the dull moments of his call centre shift, the artist cut images from business catalogues and Sunday newspaper supplements and eventually created twenty-two works that will go on display at a Buenos Aires art gallery in August.

According to Mussu, his original frustration with the tedium of the job became a means for an end and the office actually served as the springboard that launched the development of the project. The artist began using tools within his reach—namely Scotch tape and scissors— to create his artwork and find significance in his cubicle.

Throughout the year that Mussu worked on the project, he found that the office space did not impede his artwork, but actually inspired it. ¨I ended up getting my best art done at the office and many times I couldn´t be inventive if I was somewhere else,¨ he says.

Discovering meaning in the banalities of everyday life also became the resounding anecdote behind the project.

¨You have to look for the good in situations that overwhelm you or don´t give you a sense of purpose,¨ Mussu explains. ¨The key is overcoming the obstacle and finding an alternative way to be happy.¨

In each collage, unconventional objects are superimposed on human figures creating a composition of fantastical elements that challenge the parameters of reality.  In one work, for example, a salad bowl replaces an ear while in another, a six-headed deer covers a man´s face.

Asked whether his boss complained about the project, Mussu says that ¨just so long as the art did not interfere with my work, I had free reign over my desk.¨ When each creation kept growing in size though, he ultimately completed the series at home.

Upon raising money to mount and frame the series through his Ideame campaign, Mussu will begin a new project.  If ¨Office Work¨ is any indication, the call centre may once again become an art studio.