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The Burger King Exhibition

In 2002, I organised an exhibition in a Burger King, located in London (UK), two doors down from the Whitechapel Art Gallery, one of Great Britain most prestigious art institution. Many artists accepted to participate in the show, which turned out to be quite a success.

The Burger King already acted as a museum, with on display posters of dead art geniuses such as Matisse, Klee or Van Gogh, I decided to give a chance to contemporary artists to take place in what could be a Burger King in fifty years from then.

The Works

The show would never have happened without the collaboration of the artists on display: Tom Cheshire, Angus Fairhurst, Babak Ganjei, Mark Leckey, Cyril Lepetit, David Medalla, Gilbert and George, Bob and Roberta Smith and Wolfgang Tillmans. The artists were asked to give me the rights to reproduce their works. I made a poster of their work that I replaced with the ones already in place. View all the posters in the show.

The Salon of the Rejected:

Burger King Ltd. had a final say on the works. All the submitted pieces had to go through a Burger King committee. The company rejected most of the artworks I had initially selected, preventing their customers access to a valuable slice of art. Sadly, the rejected works were much better than the ones selected by BK's headquarters.

• David Medalla's Mondrian in Excelsius got barred for penile protuberance.
• Marc Leckey's Puff Daddy and the Colonel because of fast food competition. Instead Burger King preferred a picture of Marlon Brando dressed in a Nazi uniform.
• Babak Ganjei's Britney Spears on September the 11th, the work original title got censored.
• Gilbert and George's We are All Angry was judged too violent
• Jeremy Deller's meatpacking farm proposal picture never even made it to the Burger King desk.
• Daniel Johnston's Prayer arrived too late for revision by the committee and thus didn't make it to the show.

See the rejected pieces that never made it in the Burger King Exhibition.

The Catalogue

A 50 pages catalogue was issued for the event, made of photocopies of the letters to and from the artists in the show.

See here invites to Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin's nice refusal letter.