Significant Objects

As Aki Sasamoto sees the world, an object is never merely its humble self. It may be, as the artist has written, her grandmother, who became a kimono belt after her death. Or her music teacher, who became a wig worn after chemotherapy. In other words, objects exist within a web of associations and relationships that are utterly personal, but also — at times — bewilderingly universal. Sasamoto, whose work was included in the 2010 Whitney Biennial, makes these connections visible through networks of cords and cables that demarcate lines across spaces and between repeated motifs like lemons and doughnuts. In her performances, she frequently wields a thick marker to draw whirlwind diagrams of coincidence or alliances, as if she were an unusually aggressive math teacher (the field in which she began her studies). The relentless pace of her narration is matched in her nimble and mercurial movements; her installations often act as room-size jungle gyms, from which she effortlessly folds, wraps or dangles her body, navigating around her audience.

(via Aki Sasamoto’s Lines of Reasoning - NYTimes.com)

Julia Callon, The Yellow Wallpaper No. 2, 40” x 26”, edition of 5

(via Dioramas Inspired by 19th-Century Women Novelists - Judy Berman - The Atlantic)

Where do you find inspiration?

In the overlooked, the mundane, the unvalued, the ruined. Ruminating about a broken coffee cup, and why its value to me had been all about the story attached to it, helped lead to Significant Objects, an online literary project that recently became a book. Contemplating empty buildings with banal real-estate signs helped inspire The Hypothetical Development Organization, a public art project that ended up being included in the U.S. presentation at the Venice Architecture Biennale this year. And “As Real As It Gets” gathers a lot of work that will I think make visitors look in a new way at certain commercial-culture trappings we’ve all gotten so used to that we hardly notice them anymore.

I would also say that, especially in the last couple of years, I’ve become more and more excited about team-up projects. For starters it was so much fun to work with Joshua Glenn, co-founder of Significant Objects, and Ellen Susan and G.K. Darby, on HDO — all people who have skills that I completely lack. And then with both of those projects as well as “As Real As It Gets,” everything really depends on rounding up the right group of contributors: writers for S.O., artists and architects for H.D.O., and now artists and designers and others for the new show.

(via 8 Questions With: Rob Walker — Imprint Culture Lab)

It will be a place where you can buy a pair of secondhand snow skis or a functional toilet tank or a Barack Obama commemorative plate ($23) or an unused SpongeBob SquarePants alarm clock ($18). Or, if the price is right, you might even leave with a good set of Noritake china once owned by the mother of Martha Rosler, the creator and proprietor of the garage sale, who was unboxing the pieces on Monday afternoon and noted that they were not just for show.

“No, no, I hope somebody buys them,” she said, adding: “Jewish women always have four sets of dishes. I’ve got way too many.”

Of course, because the dishes and some 14,000 other things Ms. Rosler has amassed over the last year will be sold in the heart of one of the most powerful art institutions in the world, they can never be just garage sale items.

(via Martha Rosler’s ‘Meta-Monumental Garage Sale,’ at MoMA - NYTimes.com)

Heap Gives Up
Leigh Wells and Leif Low-beer
Oct 18 — Nov 4

Opening Oct 18, 7—10pm

Press Release

“I have always liked the idea of a room cluttered by beautiful objects sitting next to an empty room, with clean lines — both under the same roof.” — Leif Low-beer

“For me there is a creative moment of excitement when I find the way two parts of different objects are going to relate to each other.” — Leigh Wells

For our second show, Beginnings— is pleased to present two artists working on opposite sides of the country, object-gatherers who also create mysterious and beautiful objects. Both Leigh and Leif have a scientific approach to accumulating elements spread across different dimensions and sentiments and arranging them in the correct, harmonious way. The resultant collages and assemblages are elegant combinations of color, shade, and light. Study these images for a while and a growing complexity and depth is revealed: solemn weariness in Low-beer’s whimsy; a ferocious charm in Wells’ gravitas. Easy on the eyes, but not always on the heart.

theparisreview:

“I think your books always tell a story about you … They’re a way to touch on ideas and thoughts that aren’t your own but are essential to you. A lot of people would put books on shelves they hadn’t read or were by someone who had touched their lives.”

Our former online editor, Thessaly La Force, on the growing business of reader recommendations. Thessaly’s book, My Ideal Bookshelf, a collaboration with artist Jane Mount, is out in November.

Prem Krishnamurthy, a principal of Project Projects in New York, has opened P!, a new exhibition space in Chinatown. It launches next week, on September 16, with a three-person show: Process 01: Joy, featuring works by the former photographer and now occupational therapist Chauncey Hare, the conceptual artist Christine Hill, and the graphic designer Karel Martens.

A collage by William Burroughs.

From a rather awesome roundup by Steven Heller: The Visual Art and Design of Famous Writers

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The Significant Objects Tumblr is proudly sponsored by the Significant Objects book: Launch event at The Strand, NYC, July 10, 2012: With Luc Sante, Ben Greenman, Shelley Jackson, Matthew Sharpe, Mimi Lipson, Jason Grote, Annie Nocenti, Joshua Glenn, and Rob Walker. Details here.