30 x 30cm
Vasilis Zografos
“La vie des objets”
While values are set by material Culture, objects whose price greatly exceeds our wish to possess them create a distance between the person who covets them and the effort needed to obtain them, between pure desire and instant gratification.
Within this void, significations and interpretations are established. These are not only tied to the objects themselves, to their provenance and their symbolisms, but chiefly to the Subject, to her social conditions, her emotional weights and wants, which create the need to transform the values that the object carries.
Man’s mental and emotional potential, the need for ownership and to establish a social profile as well as existential anxiety have all been motivations behind private collections and museums. For artists, the object, as both a transmitter and a receiver, functions as vehicle for ideas, which are introduced into the work of art as ready-mades – a process that redefines its use value according to aesthetic criteria.
However, what happens when the artist becomes the collector and therefore the Subject desiring gratification? How does the artist select objects, often overlooking their materiality, historical context, manufacturing, practical use and extant copies? What is the artist’s approach to the object’s meaning and worth, and how does the artist transcend the Subjective and approach the Collective, through the exchange of values?
Vasilis Zografos