All of us today have, at one time or another, bought a product online that was sold to us through a virtual commerce platform. We do not verify its origin, the mode of production of this object. We are not even aware that the merchandise might come from a company that exploits enslaved labor because, in the muddy pit of information that is the Internet, the interfaces of so-called local e-commerce platforms are linked to others from global platforms, making it difficult for the consumer—who is at the very end of this extensively and intensely ramified chain—to trace social responsibility (or irresponsibility). Is it possible to buy locally, following the current encouragement to support small businesses? Without a doubt, although most of the time we are merely outsourcing the responsibility for (un)conscious consumption, given that even these small retailers are likely to buy from wholesalers who, at some point, will be at the mercy of the network logic that operates online.

​

One of the “tips” for trying to get around this trap of contemporary consumption is to buy from those who produce on a small scale and present their production chain transparently. In this other logic, the rare is valued and its monetary equivalent is likewise inflated.

​

That is, little for few. If we pay attention to today’s consumerist cynicism, we notice that this rule still governs the luxury market, which is sustained by the rarity of its goods as symbolic capital for those who acquire its singular objects. These are not available to just anyone who wants them; they are a privilege of the chosen. First-line Pradas and Vuittons as class markers are only for some, but you may settle for a counterfeit or even for the large-scale product lines made available to the upper-middle classes of the world. However, your bag will never compare to the one held by those first lines, because those are not for just anyone’s eyes. They have prestigious homes and hands.

​

The art market shares with the luxury market this seduction of the unique, the unprecedented, the exclusive. Any of us can have a poster of a Van Gogh painting, but his paintings are extremely limited, strictly counted, inscribed in art history and validated by countless processes of expertise within the art world. Thus, forgers could only exist in a world that fiercely desires exclusivity; otherwise, they would have no clientele.

​

The artist Andrea Fraser, in “L’1% C’est Moi”, states that “the greater the discrepancy between rich and poor, the higher the prices in this market.” Her hope lies with European museums which, according to her, will develop autonomous alternatives in their institutional organizations. (We here, in decolonial lands, are more skeptical about that wager)(1).

​

It is best not even to remember what ended up happening to artistic media that once sought to remain unmarketable—performances, videos, digital art, and urban or rural interventions are sold; there are no limits to the new.

In light of this, we might ask ourselves: if the art market, in its luxury perspective, were to merge with Shein or AliExpress, what face would it have?

​

This is the question posed by Gustavo von Ha, whose artistic research has already investigated aura and exclusivity in contemporary art, leading him to forgeries and stagings, to trailers of films never shot, to paintings by artists who never existed. Reality and fiction together. Now his “work” is an e-commerce site, a perfect lookalike of any other, differing only in some of the products it offers. Among T-shirts, vacuum cleaners, and sado-masochistic accessories, canvases and sculptures make up the VON HA™ brand and are available to whomever wants—and is able—to pay. Part project, part gallery, part “Chinese,” part Galeria Pagé, the platform VON HA inc.™ (www.von-ha.com) was created with all the mechanisms that structure any other: production services, logistics, product design, digital design, etc. Everything here is original. And it isn’t.