- Manal Abu-Shaheen
- Vahap Avşar
- Jesus Benavente and Felipe Castelblanco
- Brian Caverly
- Kerry Downey
- Magali Duzant
- Golnaz Esmaili
- Mohammed Fayaz
- Kate Gilmore
- Jonah Groeneboer
- Bang Geul Han and Minna Pöllänen
- Dave Hardy
- Sylvia Hardy
- Shadi Harouni
- Janks Archive
- Robin Kang
- Kristin Lucas
- Carl Marin
- Eileen Maxson
- Melanie McLain
- Shane Mecklenburger
- Lawrence Mesich
- Freya Powell
- Xiaoshi Vivian Vivian Qin
- Alan Ruiz
- Samita Sinha and Brian Chase
- Barb Smith
- Monika Sziladi
- Alina Tenser
- Trans-Pecos with 8 Ball Community, E.S.P. TV, and Chillin Island
- Mark Tribe
- Sam Vernon
- Max Warsh
- Jennifer Williams
- An Itinerary with Notes
- Exhibition Views
- Hidden
- Watershed
- A Distant Memory Being Recalled (Queens Teens Respond)
- Overhead: A Response to Kerry Downey’s Fishing with Angela
- Sweat, Leaks, Holes: Crossing the Threshold
- PULSE: On Jonah Groeneboer’s The Potential in Waves Colliding
- Interview: Melanie McLain and Alina Tenser
- Personal Space
- Data, the Social Being, and the Social Network
- Responses from Mechanical Turk
- MAPS, DNA, AND SPAM
- Queens Internacional 2016
- Uneven Development: On Beirut and Plein Air
- A Crisis of Context
- Return to Sender
- Interview: Vahap Avşar and Shadi Harouni
- Mining Through History: The Contemporary Practices of Vahap Avşar and Shadi Harouni
- A Conversation with Shadi Harouni's The Lightest of Stones
- Directions to a Gravel Quarry
- Walk This Way
- Interview: Brian Caverly and Barb Smith
- "I drew the one that has the teeth marks..."
- BEAT IT! (Queens Teens respond)
- Moments
- Lawn Furniture
- In Between Difference, Repetition, and Original Use
- Interview: Dave Hardy and Max Warsh
- Again—and again: on the recent work of Alan Ruiz
- City of Tomorrow
- Noticing This Space
- NO PLACE FOR A MAP
- The History of the World Was with Me That Night
- What You Don't See (Queens Teens Respond)
- Interview: Allison Davis and Sam Vernon
- When You’re Smiling…The Many Faces Behind the Mask
- Interview: Jesus Benavente and Carl Marin
- The Eternal Insult
- Janking Off
- Queens Theatricality
Shane Mecklenburger’s Tendered Currency (2012) recalls Joseph Kosuth’s One and Three Chairs (1965) by taking up the performative aspect of difference. However, while Kosuth’s piece requires us to navigate three items that are conceptually similar, Mecklenburger’s pieces (a triptych of smaller sculptures) implore us to determine the connection between items that, on the surface, seem unconnected. At first, we would be hard pressed to find a unified narrative in the ashes of a cremated armadillo, bullets, and a portion of the script for Superman III (1983), and yet, we can’t ignore that each piece also contains a diamond housed under a uniquely shaped bell jar that is related to the contents of each individual piece. The bell jars give hints as to the origins of the diamonds, which are manufactured from the other materials in the case. The diamonds unify the triptych but also give rise to layers of meaning.
The original material used to create each diamond has its own individual history, but Tendered Currency reminds us of the fluidity of being, freezing in time certain aspects of the source material. The work as a whole culminates with the repetition of the diamond, creating a drawing together of the differences between the source material. In doing this, Mecklenburger reconstitutes the original to create a repetition that simultaneously alludes to and negates the original, thereby drawing attention to the fluid and rhizomal motion of the value of the thing itself.
While Mecklenburger’s work creates repetition from difference, Lawrence Mesich’s Highest and Best Use (388 Bridge St.) (2016) inverts the progression to create difference from repetition. Created from a 15-story section of a street-level photograph of 388 Bridge Street in Downtown Brooklyn, the piece systematically scales and distorts each repetition of the image in order to replicate the perspective of a street-level photograph on the scale of the original. The resulting image cannot merely be a representation of the original; instead, it takes on a life of its own, potentially extending infinitely.
Highest and Best Use (388 Bridge St.) is a simulacrum. The repetition of the original image necessitates repeated distortions in order to maintain the sense of perspective and scale that would be present in a street-level photograph. And while it does allude to the original, we are ultimately presented with an image of a building that does not exist. Here, difference, through repetition, is performed on a large and potentially infinite scale, resulting in a simulated image that tends toward the hyper-real.
These pieces, in spite of their structural variations, present a common thread: the notion of value. Mecklenburger draws attention to the fact that materials of little value can be transformed into something of high value. In turn, this causes us to acknowledge the steps involved in this process, each of which has its own value. Mesich addresses the issue of rapid gentrification in an area that desperately needs affordable housing while thoughtfully playing on a certain consistency in the construction of luxury high-rises. In the end, both works take up the fluid nature of value by performing difference.
Joseph Di Ponio is a composer, sound artist, occasional art theorist, and an even more occasional curator. He has composed pieces for numerous ensembles and his work is performed regularly throughout the United States. Since 2014 he has been developing a sound and image environment with Australian artist, John Neeson. Di Ponio received his Ph.D. in music composition and theory from SUNY Stony Brook, where he also studied aesthetics with Hugh Silverman and Donald Kuspit. He is interested in the intersections between art, music, and philosophy.