Please, Don't Smoke The Art

"Don't smoke the art" is a pretty standard, unwritten law at museums and galleries across the world. Yet in the case of German-Korean artist Andrei Koschmieder's hyperrealistic faux marijuana dispensary, the advisory was warranted.

Koschmieder's sculptures, recently on view at Real Fine Arts' booth at Art Basel Miami Beach, in the Positions sector, look exactly like fresh buds of green, from the crystalline edges to the furry orange splinters woven throughout. Alas, anyone who lit one up would be in for a rude awakening, because the little guys are made entirely of paper. 

Specifically, they're made from ink-jet printed paper featuring scanned images of marijuana, crumpled up and glued together with the help of a little resin. It's hard to believe these wildly realistic nugs were birthed from a Canon printer. If only the next booth over featured a hyperrealistic faux cereal buffet. 

"This reproduction, in its questionable realness, incites a psychological reaction," the artist explains in a statement. "Towards the faux marijuana -- desire, excitement for the taboo, dismissal, etc. This range of emotion caused by an object that got shot out of a Canon printer, introduces a possible future of Canons where psychological states are printed directly."

Yes, these graphically lifelike marijuana greens are cool to look at. Yes, they're probably even cooler to look at under the influence of authentic marijuana greens. It's like, you're smoking real weed to look at fake weed but the fake weed is also making you feel more high, so like, what is real anyway? And the infinite loop of so-called reality plays on ... 

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