James Casebere: Three lightboxes, "Utility Room, "Water Toys" and "Garage". The artist constructs models of generic locations, painted entirely in white. Once photographed, the original is destroyed or recycled, leaving the viewer with only a referent.
"Garage" reveals a cramped, crowded interior, filled with assorted auto parts and household items. Dissecting the "natural" function of photography (documentation) Casebere presents an image of two dimensional space, which has no history or prescribed narrative. "Garage", like Casebere's other lightboxes is a set, decontextualized; a stage empty of action and reason.
Larry Johnson: 8 photographs, contact Type C prints. The artist shows various fields of color, with contrasting text. Johnson's concerns lie with how our culture rearranges our perception. He presents the viewer with an innocent document (and the presupposed freedom to interpret it) that is inevitably read as perverse. The innocuousness of the piece would only be maintained in an idealized society, where repetition and misrepresentation in the media were not so prevalent.
There is an ideology that shades the (any) image and Johnson sets a trap for the audience in that he knows that they will read the letters into words which do not exist in the content of the piece. The work adopts the slick product-like presence of an add, and similarly (but with a polarized motive) plays with the viewers ability to read a hidden message. Because one can not prove intent, one is forced to look at the way images and text are deciphered.
Jeff Koons: Two equilibrium tanks and Nike poster. The artist builds free standing tanks filled partially with water and two or three basketballs. Hung above is a framed Nike add featuring future basketball stars. Koons work embodies aspects of both the minimalist and conceptual movements; in its form and presentation and in a specific criticality conveyed via the juxtapositioning of an illustration with a related object, and then the removal of the object from its environment.
Using as few as possible "art" signifiers, the locus of the work titles it as art. Concerned not only with "art as product", Koons discusses product as art and the visibility and understanding of such. A more literal reading of the work is found in the loaded imagery of the well received Nike adds, where an object is representative of mobility