Reformulations

Reformulations

Category :
  • PUBLICATION Digital Catalog for Sean Raspet's "Untitled (Registration/PIN: G0009296/78GY76DM; G0009297/99ER43TB; G0009298/39ZL54SJ)" at New Galerie, New York, curated by Alexander Benenson
  • DATE April 19-May 9, 2014
  • URL seanraspet.org
  • PDF cecimoss.com

Excerpt / For Sean Raspet’s exhibition entitled Untitled (Registration/PIN: G0009296/78GY76DM; G0009297/99ER43TB; G0009298/39ZL54SJ) at New Galerie, New York, the artist coated every surface of the gallery with synthetic DNA suspended in a gel, marketed commercially as SelectaDNA. When it comes in contact with another surface, the product leaves behind a residue containing an unique synthetic DNA sequence that can be traced back to the place of first contact. The product is advertised as a security device, which can be smeared on property or sprayed on a person at the moment of an intrusion, in order to trace suspects or valuables. SelectaDNA allows our skin, clothing, or belongings to become tracking devices, pinpointable to a specific time and place, a feature that has alarming implications for privacy and the law. The existence of such a product points towards the urgency of a politics occupied with appearance and disappearance, legibility and illegibility— a politics principle to our time. By bringing the product out of the lab (or the bank vault) into the realm of exhibition, Raspet puts SelectaDNA and its associated risks on display, rerouting them. The work speaks to Raspet’s larger interest in intervening and mimicking the way that an operational language, such as code, chemical, or law, functions as both procedure and material. By inserting what he terms as an “access point, switch or keycode” into an established process, he can mutate its larger composition. This strategy not only disrupts an existent function, it produces new deformations.

— “Reformulations” Essay for the exhibition catalog for Sean Raspet‘s “Untitled (Registration/PIN: G0009296/78GY76DM; G0009297/99ER43TB; G0009298/39ZL54SJ)” at New Galerie New York, curated by Alexander Benenson, April 19-May 9, 2014

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