Out of the Ordinary

Drawn from the Hirshhorn’s collection, this exhibition brings together works that use the processes of copying, faking, and duplicating as strategies of artistic invention. The artists do not aim to create an original; rather they follow in the tradition of Marcel Duchamp, who famously designated ordinary mass-produced objects as “Readymade” works of art, and Jasper Johns, who, in the late 1950s, chose to paint images “the mind already knows,” such as targets and the American flag. The artists in this exhibition similarly adopt commonplace items and established images as their points of departure. The results are both recognizable and strange, existing somewhere between realism and fantasy. Objects are view include such sculptures as Robert Gober’s oversized stick of butter and Christo’s sealed-off storefront and such invented forms as Richard Artschwager’s abstract Formica relief.