The Box Which Contains The World
Four sides, four corners, fourteen artists interpret the same wooden object.
The title of this exhibition is adapted from the poem Last News About the Little Box by Vasko Popa. The phrase ‘the box which contains the world’ seems to me to encapsulate the modern tradition of ‘box art’. From 16th century wunderkabinette (curiosity cabinets), in which items from the natural and anthropological world were displayed as spectacle for educational and entertainment purposes, miniature perspective theatres, dioramas and book camera obscuras (one 17th century French example is called ‘Theatre de l’uinvers’), to the Surrealist technique of assemblage most famously used in box-format by Joseph Cornell, and employed by countless artists ever since: the filled box functions as a microcosm of our world, yet the enclosed structure also separates it from that which it represents. The isolation of the artwork within allows for both reflection on and juxtaposition to the universe at large.
Of course, not all box artworks stay fully enclosed within their walls. For ‘The Box Which Contains The World’, I provided fourteen artists with an identical four-sided box (or two), and gave them free reign to interpret the object in any way they pleased. The artists in this exhibition work in distinct styles and media (despite many common aesthetics linking their work), and the resulting range of interpretations of the project is another way in which these boxes could be said to ‘contain the whole world’. From Morgan Blair’s simple yet obsessively precise patterning of the box’s surface, to Leah Tacha’s monumental trophies; from Jing Wei’s paper collage reminiscent of Victorian paper theatres (a rich inspiration for many box-artists) to Jimmy Miracle’s collection of painstakingly threaded detritus emerging from all sides (the Surrealist and Dadaist innovation of elevating the cheap found object to the status of fine art was really the start of modern and contemporary box-art): an identical starting-point has produced a plethora of unique artworks, each in some way containing a ‘world’ of its own.
As Vasko Popa challenges the reader in the last line of his poem: ‘Let’s see you find the world now.’
