Usual Objects

USUAL OBJECTS_

Chris Bradley Nicole Dyer Brendan Getz Madeleine Leplae Matt Lipps Liliana Porter Amanda Ross-Ho

MARCH 13- MAY 15, 2021

CARRIE SECRIST GALLERY

CHICAGO IL

All images courtesy the artists and Carrie Secrist Gallery.

Installation images courtesy Nathan Keay.

© 2021, Carrie Secrist Gallery

Cover image: Amanda Ross-Ho, Untitled Opening (NOIR AND BLANCO), 2015

USUAL OBJECTS_

The still life genre is a part of artistic expression dating back to the early seventeenth century. As a tool for representation, this genre continues to allow its maker to immortalize the reality of its subject intimately and immediately. It remains a way for artists to simultaneously examine how a chosen medium can conceptually alter the reality of the subject while becoming a grounding exercise in stability. The inanimate object in artistic form carries messages of potential, transformation, signi cation and objectivity. Usual Objects examines the contemporary still life in the current context of the coronavirus pandemic against this historic backdrop The majority of the work on view in the exhibition was made during the current pandemic, a time when many people are spending much of their time at home surrounded by their possessions. Objects that are personal, functional, ephemeral or antique. This time spent with the things that continually surround us, as either a monotonous presence or with newly gained signi cance created by their omnipresence, leads to a new examination of these daily interactions with objects. The objects rendered by the artists in the exhibition Usual Objects represent this intimacy but take on extra meaning in the decoding of systems within and beyond a pandemic. Here, the inanimate object – regardless of medium – is rendered symbolically as the familiar, commonplace, ordinary and usual but with an added dose of real world reality The Usual Objects you will nd here are Chris Bradley’s (Chicago) hyperrealistic sculptures in reimagined constrictions and site-speci c panic room; Nicole Dyer’s (Baltimore) Papier-mâchés of ower arrangements and tightly rendered watercolors of life’s everyday things; Brendan Getz’s (Los Angeles) paintings of the ordinary objects delivered in extraordinary complexity: Madeleine Leplae’s (Chicago) hallucinatory paintings of trees as one might see from a window; Matt Lipps’ (Los Angeles) staged and sculptural photographic-like images of the material object as theater; Amanda Ross-Ho’s

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(Los Angeles) examination of the psychophysical state of the artists’ studio and Liliana Porter’s (New York) rescaled characters attempting Sisyphean tasks related to objects shapes as we cheer them on.

INSTALLATION VIEW featuring Chris Bradley , Breeze, 2021,

Panic Rhyth

To the grave, they say I have shared many, but this one Only goes to mine That cool dawning breat When your waking logic rest Now reaches your eyes Three blinks, brown turns blu Four second glazed star Rolling back toda At any momen I know the number of step Between me and sprin From the attic, eigh From the kitchen sink, sixt The cellar, seve I keep rhythm t The sound of a woodpecke Headbanging for hom Panic, a room, tr To Imagine a picni One two three headban A hole, I threshol Like mums lean toward the su To new beginnings

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~Chris Bradle

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Chris Bradley

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Studio photograph, Chris Bradley

Chris Bradley

Always Night, 2015

wood, steel, stainless steel, cast bronze, 3D printed PLA, polystyrene, acrylic paint, magnets and adhesive

8.5 x 27.5 x 1.25 inches

DETAIL, Chris Bradley, Always Night, 2015

DETAIL, Chris Bradley, Always Night, 2015

DETAIL, Chris Bradley, Always Night, 2015

INSTALLATION VIEW featuring Chris Bradley , Always Night, 2015 and Breeze, 2021

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Chris Bradley

Breeze, 2021

wood, steel, stainless steel, 3D printed PLA, PET plastic. LEDs. mu n fans, fabric

19 x 19 x 19 inches

INSTALLATION VIEW featuring Chris Bradley, Attic, 2021, Cellar, 2021 and Breeze, 2021

Chris Bradley, Cellar, 2021, wood, steel, stainless steel, 3D printed PLA, LED, modeling turf, and twine, 12 x 15 x 10 inches

DETAIL, Chris Bradley, Cellar, 2021

Chris Bradley

Attic, 2021

wood, steel, stainless steel, 3D printed PLA, LED, aluminum tube, paint, acetate

15 x 14.5 x 14 inches

DETAIL, Chris Bradley, Attic, 2021

INSTALLATION VIEW featuring Chris Bradley, Attic, 2021, Cellar, 2021 and My Bird, 2021

Chris Bradley

My Bird, 2017-2021

wood, steel, stainless steel, 3D printed PLA, clear acrylic sheets, Lids, aluminum channel, paint, pen on paper, clear tape

18 x 10 x 18 inches

Chris Bradley, Rupture (Green Corridor with AED, 2021, wood, steel, 3D printed PLA, acetate plastic, LED, aluminum channel, cork sheet, cut paper, paint and gypsum powder, 10 x 15.5 x 10 inches

DETAIL, Chris Bradley, Rupture (Green Corridor with AED), 2021

Nicole Dyer

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My work examines a need for excess in the wake of restriction. After 17 years compulsively whittling down the number of foods I allowed myself to eat, last year, at age 28, I was left with just one. As my food list shrank, my paintings ballooned: domestic landscapes crowded with health books and food wrappers and children’s toys, the paint itself bloated with glitter and candy and sea glass. The resulting work is kleptic and obsessive, adorned with shiny objects like a magpie’s nest. My paintings are a meditation on disordered eating in an age of overconsumption. For someone with an inclination toward indulgence, there’s never been more body-adjacent media to devour: nutrition blogs, wellness in uencers, YouTube workout channels, diet books and anti-diet diet books, smoothie recipes with protein powder, before-and-after transformation pics, and so, so, so many photos of food. The in nite scroll goes on ad in nitum. I can’t look away. Binge, restrict, repeat. Anxiety and confusion about the bodies we live in—what to feed them, how to move them, what they should look like—are not anomalies of our current culture, but symptoms of it. My work is an exercise in having it all

Studio photograph, Nicole Dyer

Nicole Dyer, Great Lakes Collagen, 2019, Acrylic, paint marker, ink,Papier-mâché, cardboard, Insulation foam, dowel, 29 x 11 x 8 inches

INSTALLATION VIEW, Nicole Dyer

Nicole Dyer Fish, 2019 Acrylic, watercolor, candy wrappers, pen, glitter, stickers, collage, and handmade polymer clay candies on handmade paper 12 x 12 inches, 13.5 x 13.5 inches framed

Nicole Dyer Crema, 2019 Acrylic, watercolor, candy wrappers, pen, glitter, stickers, collage, and handmade polymer clay candies on handmade paper 12 x 12 inches, 13.5 x 13.5 inches framed

Nicole Dyer De la Rosa, 2019 Acrylic, watercolor, candy wrappers, pen, glitter, stickers, collage, and handmade polymer clay candies on handmade paper 12 x 12 inches, 13.5 x 13.5 inches framed

DETAIL, Nicole Dyer, De la Rosa, 2019

Nicole Dyer Kokos, 2019 Acrylic, watercolor, candy wrappers, pen, glitter, stickers, collage, and handmade polymer clay candies on handmade paper 12 x 12 inches, 13.5 x 13.5 inches framed

Nicole Dyer Mayonnaise, 2019 Acrylic, watercolor, candy wrappers, pen, glitter, stickers, collage, and handmade polymer clay candies on handmade paper 12 x 12 inches, 13.5 x 13.5 inches framed

Brendan Getz While the world informs/ directs/ shapes thought, we make it together collectively and can make not better than it has been before. This happens in di erent ways for di erent people, but for me it begins at the level of attention and perception.

Community is a thoughtful practice and thinking is something I choose to do in public. An exhibition can be a moment in a long arc of conversation that builds a re in a uid community, and hopefully deepens a sense of reality at di erent layers of description- conjugated in all the ways. As for my own work, I can only re ect on the thought and desire that led me to it, but out in the world the paintings are what they are. Cultivating curiosity is a practice that begins with what is immediately at hand.

What is the material surrounding me teaching me about the world? What am I touching every day and how is that teaching me how to see/ feel/ be in the world? A cared for object- caring world. A disposable object- disposable world. Paintings are objects and images and attend to awareness at surprising layers of description. Attention is a platform, and in that sense what is attended to can propagate- even as an attitude. Love is as world-building as reason and it grows when its practiced.

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~Brendan Getz

Studio photograph, Brendan Getz

Brendan Getz Painted building bolt and a barycentric view, 2020 Oil on canvas 14 x 11 inches

Brendan Getz Remaining indent and a previous Present (pillow painting), 2020 Oil on canvas 20 x 16 inches

Brendan Getz Lee shore bookends, 2020 Oil on canvas 20 x 16 inches

Brendan Getz Penny painting and the counter plane, Double glint in the window, 2020 Oil on canvas 7 x 5 inches

Brendan Getz Both/ and, 2020 Oil on canvas 14 x 11 inches

INSTALLATION VIEW, Brendan Getz

Brendan Getz Reflected fleck/ gleam plane (toaster painting), 2020 Oil on canvas 20 x 16 inches

Brendan Getz Container, 2020 Oil on canvas 20 x 16 inches

Brendan Getz Ice tray painting, 2020 Oil on canvas 20 x 16 inches

Brendan Getz Plate, 2020 Oil on canvas 20 x 16 inches

Brendan Getz Plastic cup painting, 2020 Oil on canvas 14 x 11 inches

Brendan Getz Glass, 2020 Oil on canvas 14 x 11 inches

Madeleine Laplae I like to think of things I know how to draw. Sometimes Im shocked by how few things I can draw from memory. Sometimes I try and I do know how to draw it. A tree for instance.

This year, like many of us, I spent my time separated from people and things that I thought were integral to my life. All of our worlds shrunk down to our homes and our thoughts. I really began to savor any time spent outdoors. Once I had made the decision to start painting trees It was hard to not notice every change in the ones I passed daily. The way light was reflecting off different barks and the gradation of the leaves as we got later into summer, finally the loss of all the leaves and their structures now covered in snow. It just became a reminder that time was still passing as it always has.

There are so many incredible ways nature grows and aligns itself. I've become increasingly interested in very geometric situations. I can't imagine that in the billions of years of life on earth, a pile of leaves hasn't naturally found itself in a perfect ring or drops of dew on a trunk in a perfect line!

Our world is so magnificent and provides perfect compositions every day. Shrinking the world around me has only made that clearer.

~Madeleine Laplae

View from the studio, Madeleine Leplae

Madeleine Laplae Sappy Tree, 2020 Oil on canvas 48 x 24 inches

Madeleine Laplae Dewey Tree, 2020 Oil on canvas 48 x 24 inches

Matt Lipps In the series, Looking Through Pictures (2016), I explore the genre of still life photography in relation to the mise-en-scène of theater as a space for figures, props, objects—and photography itself—to perform. With a broad cast of characters culled from various high and low sources, the “actors” range from the familiar to the formal (including modernist sculpture, figure models, and floral arrangements) set to a backdrop that engages the “death” of Modernism as seen through the medium of photography and artwork reproductions found on the book’s page.

In this self-reflexive exploration of my process, I began by mining my archive of “already used” book pages— those remnants from which images had been cut out and used as elements in previous works. Here, I am reimagining the negative space as both an absence and a presence – at once a void and a place of infinite possibility—marking the irretrievability of the original moment of modernism and its enduring influence on our imaginations and cultural representations.

By engaging with Modernism’s past through the medium of photography and specifically, the reproduced image/ printed page, I point to the outmodedness not only of Modernism, but also of the very representational means through which we access this past. While this body of work looks back at Modernism’s past, it also reflects on the way this past continues to haunt the present. The painted backdrops provide a psychological architecture for the image: settings that no longer “contain” or hold the object, but mark its release into another space. These visually complex, layered windows create an indeterminate realm for objects and figures to interact and perform in intuitively arranged tableaux that beckon to the viewer to “reanimate” these actors according to their own scripts, be they dramatic or playful.

~Matt Lipps

Studio photograph, Matt Lipps

INSTALLATION VIEW, Matt Lipps

Matt Lipps Offering I, 2016 Archival pigment print 50 x 40 inches 51 x 41 inches framed Edition 2/5

Matt Lipps Offering III, 2016 Archival pigment print 50 x 40 inches 51 x 41 inches framed Edition 2/5

Matt Lipps Turning, 2016 Archival pigment print 50 x 40 inches 51 x 41 inches framed Edition 1/5

Liliana Porter My latest works include a cast of figurines and objects found in flea markets or antique stores. With them I construct what I call “situations” that serve as metaphors of the human condition. I am very attracted to the convention of a Still Life because it includes a sort of theatrical side that facilitates the presentation of allegories and the construction of meaning. The contexts (for instance, the present pandemic) trigger a variety of reflections and formal solutions.

~Liliana Porter

Studio photograph, Liliana Porter

Liliana Porter

Untitled with Ironing Board, 2018,

acrylic and assemblage on canvas

36 x 125 x 3.5 inches

DETAIL, Liliana Porter, Untitled with Ironing Board, 2018

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Liliana Porter

The Artist, 2018,

Acrylic paint, geometric shapes and gurine on black shelf

36 x 125 x 3.5 inches

DETAIL, Liliana Porter, The Artist, 2018

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Liliana Porter

To Draw It, 2018,

Acrylic paint, geometric shapes and gurine on black shelf

36 x 125 x 3.5 inches

DETAIL, Liliana Porter, To Draw It, 2018

Amanda Ross-Ho Throughout their period of service, these objects have experienced premium, white glove art handling by teams of preparators and registrars, and they have also been wrangled by my own hands through numerous DIY, hastily assembled fed ex shipments. They have been packed, unpacked, and repacked in archival materials, cardboard boxes, and crates and shipped to and from locations all over the world. They have travelled by ship, plane, and ground transport. Some have absurdly shipped back and forth between the same city more than once. They have served as support elements and visual props in exhibition presentations and installational tableaux in galleries, museums, art fairs, artist-run spaces, and university galleries. Eventually, once expired as fresh currency and deemed inert, they are circulated back to my studio in periodic shipments, mummi ed with palimpsests of shipping company stickers, waybills, packing slips and scrawled sharpie ROSS-HO’s. Once returned, they are reclassi ed, either directly into deep storage or exhumed to return to the active material world. Some are cannibalized into new works, and some anonymously become pedestrian objects again. Recently, I produced a traveling exhibition that was enacted at three di erent European museums. In each iteration, I was onsite for an extended period and produced a new site sensitive element of the installation directly in the space. During each install, I drank co ee from a cup borrowed from the museum’s kitchen, which I had access to and used during the onsite period.

These cups became elements in the installation as well as souvenirs of my labor, consumption, and intimacy with the institution. After the close of the exhibition, the cups were archived as artworks and returned to me.

Upon return, I unpacked them and unceremoniously slipped them into my own kitchen cabinet, allowing them to join a mismatched cadre of other cups and glasses. *

-Amanda Ross-Ho

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*excerpt from Ross-Ho’s essay AMANDA ROSS-HO; USUAL OBJECTS. The full essay can be found in the appendix of this catalog.

Studio photograph, Amanda Ross-Ho

This page: DETAIL, Amanda Ross-Ho, Untitled Seizure (ENCORE/ ALL CAST), 2020

Facing page: Amanda Ross-Ho Untitled Seizure (ENCORE/ ALL CAST), 2020 World’s Largest Coffee Cup (MY PEN IS HUGE), WARM WINE (PINOT NOIR) (WHO BURIES WHO), wicker basket (French Curve #2 With Peripheral Simulation), Glass jugs filled with Epsom Salts (Untitled Procession (WATCH LIST)), Vacuum metalized acrylic (DOUBLE DOUBLE TRAGEDY), straw hat small (WHO BURIES WHO), 3D printed stainless steel silverfish (UNTITLED PERIOD PIECE), Hand-dyed wool (TIME WAITS FOR NO ONE), Nike Air Force Ones (UNTITLED PERIOD PIECE), X-acto blade (WHO BURIES WHO), White 3D printed plastic silverfish (UNTITLKED PERIOD PIECE), wooden clothespins (Drying Rack with Developer and Fixer (ropes), X-acto blade (WHO BURIES WHO), prototype muslin glove with clock hands (UNTITLED PERIOD PIECE), Giant rubber bands (MY PEN IS HUGE), homemade pin cushion, straw hat extra small (WHO BURIES WHO), large paintbrush (MY PEN IS HUGE), frosted triangle (HOW TO REMOVE DARK SPOTS), Dressmakers chalk (UNTITLED PERIOD PIECE), wine dyed preparator’s gloves (Many Hands (PAISANO)), Mouse (YANG), silver waffle (HURTS WORST), pencil sharpener (MY PEN IS HUGE), wine glass (UNTITLED PERIOD PIECE), Foam baguette (HOW TO REMOVE DARK SPOITS), sea sponge (MY PEN IS HUGE), Baby Air Force Ones (UNTITLED PERIOD PIECE), Fake ice (WHO BURIES WHO), Vintage Goldtone Chain (Drying Rack with Developer and Fixer (ropes), plating tests on aluminum (Untitled Hands) Vintage Goldtone brooches (French Curve #2 With Peripheral Simulation), found glove (UNTITLED PERIOD PIECE), armature wire, foam Rye Bread (HOW TO REMOVE DARK SPOTS), paintbrush (MY PEN IS HUGE), plastic comb (MY PEN IS HUGE), novelty paper clips, (MY PEN IS HUGE), X-acto blade (WHO BURIES WHO), white plastic buttons (UNTITLED PERIOD PIECE), assorted used novelty pencils (MY PEN IS HUGE), rubberized grippy mat with canvas belt loop and straight pin (UNTITLED PERIOD PIECE), novelty coins (MY PEN IS HUGE), moving blanket.

77 x 65 x 3 inches

This page: DETAIL, Amanda Ross-Ho, Untitled Seizure (ENCORE/ DARK MATTER), 2021

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Facing page: Amanda Ross-Ho Untitled Seizure (ENCORE/DARK MATTER), 2021 Un nished Black Glove (small), empty thread spool (UNTIRLED PERIOD PIECE), Extra Thong (ONCE YOU GO BLACK), facemasks, Giant Scrunchie (MY PEN IS HUGE), Cut and bundled pant legs (Untitled Production Line (Modern Times), black mouse, BLACK GLOVE FINGERTIP, Mouse (Yin), BINARY (Rubber Band), BINARY (Bobby Pin (3)), 10, Untitled Metrics (TENS), cut and bundled pants parts (Untitled Production Line (Modern Times),Nike Air Force Ones (UNTITLED PERIOD PIECE), Bundled and pinned canvas (Untitled Production Line (Modern Times), Black Earring (Untitled Peripheral Swatch (FOOTPRINTS AND FREE RADICALS)), pinned canvas (Untitled Production Line (Modern Times), Dead Brushes (Periphery Composition with Basket of Dead Brushes), satin scrunchie, Delta eyemask, canvas spaghetti (Untitled Production Line (Modern Times), vintage clock numbers, pinned canvas pucks (Untitled Production Line (Modern Times), Buttons Large (Untitled Production Line (Modern Times), Black Nitrile Glove, Rolled canvas (Untitled Production Line (Modern Times), Black 3D Printed Plastic silver sh (Untitled Production Line (Modern Times), Clock hands (Untitled Production Line (Modern Times), Buttons Small (Untitled Production Line (Modern Times 77 x 67 x 5 inches

Amanda Ross-Ho, Untitled Seizure (ENCORE/ STRIPS AND PENCILS), 2021,

dye sublimation print on fabric (THIS IS A DEVELOPING STORY), novelty pens (MY PEN IS HUGE), moving blanket

INSTALLATION VIEW, Amanda RossHo, Untitled Seizure (ENCORE/ STRIPS AND PENCILS), 2021 and Untitled Timepiece (FUGUE STATE), 2019-2021

This page: DETAIL, Untitled Timepiece (FUGUE STATE), 2019- 2021

Facing page: Amanda Ross-Ho Untitled Timepiece (FUGUE STATE) , 2019- 2021 Gesso, silkscreen, acrylic, ink, ball point pen, graphite, oil pastel, coffee, wine, tea, paper, laser prints, post-it notes, burlap, felt, canvas, velvet, specialty fabric, plastic bottlecap, tongue depressors, pencil shavings, stickers on canvas covered panel 52 x 52 x 1.5 inches

This page: INSTALLATION VIEW, Amanda Ross-Ho Untitled Timepiece (ORAL ARGUMENTS/OVERLAPPING JURISDICTIONS) , 2019- 2021 and Untitled Seizure (ENCORE/ DARK MATTER), 2021

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Facing page: Amanda Ross-Ho Untitled Timepiece (ORAL ARGUMENTS/OVERLAPPING JURISTICTIONS) , 2019- 2021 Gesso, silkscreen, acrylic, ink, ball point pen, graphite, oil pastel, coffee, tea, paper, artist’s tape, painter’s tape, laser prints, stretch sequin fabric on canvas covered panel 52 x 52 x 1.5 inche

This page: DETAIL, Amanda Ross-Ho, Untitled Timepiece (PERMANENT DAMAGE/ WIDELY HELD ASSUMPTIONS) , 2019- 2021

Facing page: Amanda Ross-Ho Untitled Timepiece (PERMANENT DAMAGE/ WIDELY HELD ASSUMPTIONS) , 2019- 2021 Gesso, silkscreen, acrylic, ink, ball point pen, graphite, charcoal, oil pastel, watercolor, coffee, tea, wine, paper, laser prints tongue depressors, post-it notes, felt, on canvas covered panel 52 x 52 x 1.5 inches

Amanda Ross-Ho, Untitled Opening (Noir and Blanco) , 2015 Thirty-five 1:12 scale glass wine glasses, pigmented resin Dimensions variable Edition of 3

DETAIL, Amanda Ross-Ho, Untitled Opening (Noir and Blanco) , 2015

DETAIL, Amanda Ross-Ho, Untitled Opening (Noir and Blanco) , 2015

DETAIL, Amanda Ross-Ho, Untitled Opening (Noir and Blanco) , 2015

APPENDIX

The transaction tore several holes in the space time continuum and reunited objects from our formerly undivided family household separated by a gap of more than thirty years. In one case, a simple wooden dresser that had been a fixture in my childhood home, was brought to my mother’s new domestic space and united with a hand-made wooden toybox that had once sat next to it in a past life.

AMANDA ROSS-HO: USUAL OBJECTS

East Providence, Rhode Island Police Department seizure of multiple guns, drugs, 260K, 2019

In 2004, I produced a body of work in which I sourced and archived online public domain police seizure photographs. These images were mined during a less regulated, pre social media era of the internet, when access to public databases was more limber.

Within these images, seized contraband such as weapons, drugs, and cash are carefully arranged into taxonomies, using compositional economy, symmetry, and disturbingly, a perverse element of artistry. Presumably art directed by law enforcement, the photographs serve the function of forensic evidentiary records, but are also grotesque trophies boasting acquisition of the felonious bounties (like a hunter proudly posing with a fresh kill). Most interesting to me, the photographs also commemorate a moment of transition in which the assets of illegal commerce changes hands. At the precise instant of photographic capture, the seized objects shift in status and are removed from their intended circulation to enter a new chain of custody. Their value is permanently altered as they are deaccessioned as economic instruments. The objects are thus evacuated of their function, to become hollow placeholders, props, zombies.

Recently, I have negotiated other complex archives. Last summer, I helped both of my parents move. (They have been divorced and have lived in separate homes since I was 14). The timing was not the only coincidence. My father’s move involved sorting the copious belongings in his Chicago apartment and putting most of it in storage. My mother’s move involved helping her furnish a brand new apartment, just a few blocks away. Inevitably, the geographic proximity and simultaneous subtractive and additive efforts became entwined, and some items from my father’s archive ended up migrating over to my mother’s to solve gaps in her furnishings. Some were banal items, like stacks of post-it notes and pens, which I quietly merged with her existing office supplies. Others were more significant.

The elements are arranged into three floor-bound taxonomies, strictly ordered within the compositional frame of a well-used moving blanket from my studio. The arrangements are self-conscious of the impending gaze of both viewer and camera. They are photogenic. Like the police seizure images, they hover with the provisionality of temporary staging. Like an assortment of art objects awaiting installation by a gallery preparator, or a forensic archive of supporting evidence, the arrangements act as ceremony of transition for the objects.

The origin and provenance of these objects is diverse. To perform their initial function, the elements were collected and recruited from source environments with which I had intimacy, including my studio, domestic spaces, galleries, institutions, or the street--taken out of their existing circulation and reassigned as art material. Others were sourced as new store-bought readymades, or are fabricated props that I produced for specific presentations.

Throughout their period of service, these objects have experienced premium, white glove art handling by teams of preparators and registrars, and they have also been wrangled by my own hands through numerous DIY, hastily assembled fed ex shipments. They have been packed, unpacked, and repacked in archival materials, cardboard boxes, and crates and shipped to and from locations all over the world. They have travelled by ship, plane, and ground transport. Some have absurdly shipped back and forth between the same city more than once.

They have served as support elements and visual props in exhibition presentations and installational tableaux in galleries, museums, art fairs, artistrun spaces, and university galleries. Eventually, once expired as fresh currency and deemed inert, they are circulated back to my studio in periodic shipments, mummified with palimpsests of shipping company stickers, waybills, packing slips and scrawled sharpie ROSS-HO’s. Once returned, they are reclassified, either directly into deep storage or exhumed to return to the active material world.

Some are cannibalized into new works, and some anonymously become pedestrian objects again. Recently, I produced a traveling exhibition that was enacted at three different European museums. In each iteration, I was onsite for an extended period and produced a new site sensitive element of the installation directly in the space. During each install, I drank coffee from a cup borrowed from the museum’s kitchen, which I had access to and used during the onsite period.

These cups became elements in the installation as well as souvenirs of my labor, consumption, and intimacy with the institution. After the close of the exhibition, the cups were archived as artworks and returned to me. Upon return, I unpacked them and unceremoniously slipped them into my own kitchen cabinet, allowing them to join a mismatched cadre of other cups and glasses.

All work copyright the artist and Carrie Secrist Gallery, ©2021. Any use, disclosure, copying or distribution of this document without prior written permission from the owner is strictly prohibited.

Pricing and availability of works of art listed in this document is subject to change without prior notice.

To view the exhibition Usual Objects, please visit us on-line at www.secristgallery.com, or in person (by appointment only) at

900 West Washington, Chicago, IL 60607

312.491.0917

www.secristgallery.com

For more information, please contact Britton Bertran at 312.491.0917