'Moon Rock', 2007
25 x 20 x 17
The ten artworks chosen this week represent manufactured artifacts, which are all functional (the Nail Clipper cuts the nail, the carousel plays music, the lamp provides light, etc...). By turning these objects into artworks, the artists take away their function as objects so that they become useless.
Can these objects subsequently be considered as readymades? If we abide to Tony Godfrey's definition of 'readymade' as "a term invented by Duchamp for an object from the outside world which is claimed or proposed as art, thus denying both the uniqueness of the art object and the necessity for the artist's hand"1, the objects here cannot be considered as such, because all of them are have been constructed by artists' hands.
That is, with one exception: Christopher Hodson's 'Moon Rock' (2007). As the artist explains, it is a piece of basalt pumice found in Naples, rather than from the moon. What drew me to this object is first the fact that 'Moon Rock' may be a readymade and secondly that Hodson says, "Moon Rock and pumice are comprised of much the same elements, so [the title] is only half an untruth".
On the one hand, the title evokes something very contemplative and rare, i.e. a rock from the moon; on the other hand, Hodson destroys the aura created by its uniqueness suggesting that it could be any piece of basalt, and says, tongue in cheek, that it is almost the same as it was coming from the moon. I was interested in the duality between the title of this work - often so important in conceptual art - and the idea, which contradicts the information given by the title.
As with the other artworks mentioned before, this found object is being presented as a scientific curiosity on a little plinth, losing its scientific purpose when becoming an artwork. Once turned into art, no one will analyze it as if it was in a laboratory. Stripping off their original context when transforming the objects into artworks, the artists give the artifacts a new meaning, each one more rich than the other...
To see more of his work registered on Saatchi Online click here
1.Conceptual Art (Phaidon Press, 1998, p.7)
Victoria Chaine Mendrzyk
Victoria Chaine Mendrzyk graduated with an MA Curating Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art, a BA in Fine Art and History of Art from Goldsmiths College, University of London and a BA in Philosophy from University of Paris X, Nanterre. She has worked for Beaux-Arts Magazine, the Grand-Palais and at the Maison Rouge in Paris, at Sundaram Tagore Gallery in New-York, at Documenta 12 in Kassel and at Deichtorhallen in Hamburg. She is also an international correspondent for Art India Magazine.
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