Logitech Cordless, Access Duo Optical, M/N:Y-RH35
by Michael D Ellenbogen
Series: Essentials
Number: 001
Year: 2019
Size: 22” x 77” x 5”
Medium: Mixed-Media on Wood
* Custom built Plexiglass frame-box included.
The Essentials Series started as a way for me to separate myself from my tools and extend the life of a tool beyond the Technology Life Cycle (TLC) we know as research and development, ascent, maturity, and decline. Outside the cycle, the tool is a thing of beauty on the one hand, trash to some and a mystery many. A mystery begs to be solved. The new, fifth stage is art, which is not only timeless, but in my opinion can be a step in the process of solving the mystery.
Deconstruction of the tool allows me to reveal the essential elements of its form and function. Assemblage, or reassemblage of the tool’s most basic elements, as an artistic process, allows me to create a new language consisting of three-dimensional elements on a substrate of my choice.
For the Essential Series, I have chosen a rational assemblage method, using the original principle of the tool’s design to guide the composition. The result is a visual language created from deconstructed elements that brings the viewer closer to a universal truth and understanding of the common tools we use on a day to day basis.
Since assemblage emerged as an art form with works from Picasso, Braques, Duchamp, Rauschenberg, Cornell, Ray and others, juxtaposition has been a common language employed to create meaning – a form of poetry in 3D form. In the Essential Series, I eschew juxtaposition, allowing the “research and development” period of the TLC to take center stage once again.