Point of Sale

in 1998 comme de Garcon invited me to make an installation at their flagship store in Tokyo. After some hours of looking at the space i made a small sketch on a scrap of paper, half an idea that i didnt think was very inspiring. I came back to continue working on the idea and the owners of the space had already had the sketch made up into blue prints and did not seem to want to discuss the idea further. They had made up their minds to go ahead with the idea anyway and i was unable to pursuade them to stop.

Back in the 1970 s I worked for a short time at a screen printing company and they were making signs that they called ‘point of sale’, something which i did not fully understand at the time. What was point of sale ? What was the point of selling, in fact what was the point of anything at all.

The eight sets of automatic sliding doors were installed overnight by a large team, cutting into the marble floor to professionally set the glass doors into position. The opening of the artwork coincided with Comme de Garcons latest autumn collection of clothing. The original idea was the doors would open like a wave in front of the customer/consumer but instead the timing of the doors tended to trap people inside. The doors were removed six weeks later.

Tokyo 1998