Details
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Details of object number: CV2
Title:Ghost in the Machine (original title)
Object name:installation
sculpture
sculpture
Collection:Private Collection
Created by:Durham, Jimmie (artist) (Houston, 1940-07-10 - Berlin, 2021-11-17)
Production date:2005
Description:Cast of an ancient sculpture of the goddess Athena tied to a refrigerator with a rope.
Hist. crit. notes:With his works, Jimmie Durham has helped expose the ideological prejudices upon which Western culture is based. Durham, who is of Cherokee descent, uses his enthusiasm for primitivism to deconstruct modernism’s inherent stereotypes of otherness. The artist often uses waste materials to create installations with an ecological approach. In the 1980s, his work forced the elitist, white-dominated art system in the USA to recognise that artists also existed among the indigenous population.
The work “Ghost in the Machine” echoes the title of Arthur Koestler’s book “The Ghost in the Machine” (1967), which opposes the Cartesian duality of body and mind. The sculpture of Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom and technology, is bound to a refrigerator that is reminiscent of a plinth. Ready to be thrown away or recycled, the objects question the power of knowledge, its inherent violence; but also its obsolescence, to which the museums bear witness.
The work “Ghost in the Machine” echoes the title of Arthur Koestler’s book “The Ghost in the Machine” (1967), which opposes the Cartesian duality of body and mind. The sculpture of Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom and technology, is bound to a refrigerator that is reminiscent of a plinth. Ready to be thrown away or recycled, the objects question the power of knowledge, its inherent violence; but also its obsolescence, to which the museums bear witness.
Material:Schnur
metal
Kunststoff
metal
Kunststoff
Technique:zusammengesetzt
Dimensions:
- Athena height: 173 cm
Athena width: 52 cm
Athena depth: 28 cm
refrigerator height: 144 cm
refrigerator width: 53 cm
refrigerator depth: 54 cm
Physical description:Fibreglass cast of an ancient sculpture, rope, refrigerator