Signs of Life, 2006
Published for Kunsthaus Bregenz
Duratrans color film mounted on glass, in a black painted aluminum light box, 49.5 x 67 x 3 cm (19½ x 26¼ x 1¼ in). Edition of 30, signed and numbered.
In this edition, Signs of Life, Michael Craig-Martin brings together iconic depictions of everyday consumer goods – including mobile phones, light bulbs, and wine glasses – manifesting his concept of a "visual vocabulary." The abstracted, brightly colored outline drawings strip the objects of their functional meaning and place them within an art-theoretical discourse. Following the traditions of Dada and Minimalism, Craig-Martin challenges the relationship between representation and reality. The schematic depiction of a urinal alludes to Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain (1917), a paradigmatic readymade that explores the transformation of the everyday into an artistic context.
