What are we looking at in Signal chains: images or visuals, the representation of reality or the reality of representation? Do they refer to an Other or are they just to be conceived of as self-referential? What objective or subjective criteria are to be utilized here as a reference for measuring what is at work in the representational mechanism of these works? The objectivist ‘reality’ to which they may refer, or the subjectivist [art] history of formal transformation, which by now operates in its own reality?
Instead of seeking answers solely within the works displayed in Signal chains (i.e., the objects in isolation), it would be much less tedious to explore the trajectory of Steven Cottingham’s recent image-based works, from which Signal chains seems to have come about (i.e., the objects-in-relation).
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