'IKEA art'. For many an artist and art lover, this is a category you don't want to be associated with. Reluctantly, you allow something from the home decor department to slip into your living room (think Gustav Klimt's decent reproductions), but those prints of red roses, bridges through jungles and Audrey Hepburn in stark contrast really go too far. However?
Filmmaker Tom Hoes did not suffer from such doubts and decorated his wall with a black and white photo from the Vishult series, as did almost half a million others with him. Roes did encounter the general disapproval of his friends: 'What do you have hanging on the wall?' He set out to find out the story behind this mediocre photo of a sad barrel accompanied by two musty pigeons and an overflowing trash can and made a short documentary about it (in Dutch). The result is a warm portrait of an underappreciated work by a famous photographer, an argument between two lovers and an IKEA employee. A plea for the fact that the context behind a work of art often contributes to its appreciation. Apparently that also applies to IKEA art.