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Artists' private esteem for the simple, functional object. These objects against which art feels inconsequential, inadequate against their elemental usefulness: the crafted integrity of functional objects that nobly perform their service, blue-collarly. Of course the painter feels a private respect for the signboard, it performs what the artist cannot. The handcrafted simplicity creating a directness of intention that art is forbidden.
Grotjahn says as much in in the PR.
And then detached from their context they return to performing the art trope of functionality without purpose, of signifier detached from its -fied, we receive them but there is no hotdog or High Life to manifest. They become totemic or omen-like, mystified, connote but do not mean, become hieroglyphs of a culture lost.
See too: Gedi Sibony at The Arsenale , Oscar Tuazon at Le Consortium & Paradise Garage , On Kawara at the Guggenheim