ReObjectification: Art + Object

The exhibition at Ferrin Gallery organized by Leslie Ferrin and Julia Dixon, features gallery and invited artists in a context that reflects dominant common themes in contemporary art. While some artists created specific artworks for this exhibition, all were selected for their known use of found object or appropriated imagery. For those who work directly with found materials, their work also serves to express social values of recycle, reuse and green planet environmentalism. For artists who are directly referencing images or concepts from art and decorative art history, their work falls into post modernist theory in which the original is upended through interpretation.

The gallery chose to explore the theme of ReObjectification drawing its own inspiration from major survey shows of recent years. "Trashformations"¸ a traveling exhibition from 2005-8 featured several of the artists in the gallery show. In 2007 two major inaugural survey shows opened at NYC's newest museums, the New Museum of Contemporary Art and MAD, the Museum of Art and Design. Both institutions chose to survey contemporary use of found materials from a conceptual perspective with "Unmonumental: The Object in the 21^st Century" in 2007 and at MAD, "Second Lives: Remixing the Ordinary".