Having not glanced at the press release until later, I hadn’t even clocked the fact that all the pieces here were entirely composed of found objects. It seems that this previously radical displacement of handmade artwork has become so normalised that it is no longer particularly remarkable. That Hans-Peter Feldmann’s pots of fake flowers, wall-mounted on their sides, arrive easily as a joke on painting, or that Matias Faldbakken’s cluster of spirits bottles, on the floor around a pillar by the gallery desk, provokes no confusion whatsoever, is testament to the ease with which we regard the readymade now.
If this is indeed the case, it is questionable whether subversion or criticality can still be said to escort the manufactured object to the gallery. But, claims of radicalism aside, ‘Rebus’ is enjoyable for the narratives that hover around many of the works, as a direct function of their employment of everyday stuff. Vedovamazzei’s coat on a hanger, the pockets sagging with the weight of 500 one euro coins; Sislej Xhafa’s shopping trolley filled with delicately scintillating rough-hewn bricks; and Mircea Cantor’s metre-cubed cage of demurely scented garlic invite absurdist or macabre reveries.
Where might these items be destined, and should they be released into the realm of possibilities? But sometimes the operations of the artist quash such invitations to imagine – as with John Armleder’s appropriated customised guitar and the dazzling canvas made to match. Here the connotations of designation and design draw us back to the gallery and point up the ongoing business of identifying art as art.