A consideration of the New Museum’s show “Unmonumental” and the model of the “21st century object” it proposes, a well-networked piece of sculpture too internally diverse and intersected to be constrained by form but also enough of a mobile and autonomous objet to escape the fetters of site and circumstance. An artist’s top ten, a bundle of unique lifestyle choices, a hip playlist or mixed CD, with raw materials mined from thriftstores, Home Depot, used record shops, eBay and the many other databanks that now comprise what was once called everyday life.

ABOUT LANE RELYEA

Lane Relyea is an assistant professor of Art Theory and Practice at Northwestern University and director of the Core Program and Art History at the Glassell School of Art in Houston, Texas. His essays and reviews have appeared in numerous magazines including Artforum, Parkett, Frieze, Art in America and Flash Art. He has also written recent monographs on Polly Apfelbaum, Richard Artschwager, Jeremy Blake, Vija Celmins, Toba Khedoori, Monique Prieto and Wolfgang Tillmans among others, and contributed to such exhibition catalogues as Public Offerings and Helter Skelter (both Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2001 and 1992 respectively). He has delivered lectures at Harvard University, New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago among other venues.