Sam Durant
DO GOOD THINGS!
2021
Aluminium lightbox & screenprint on translucent film
50 × 30 × 8 cm
Edition of 30 copies, signed and numbered by the artist on a back sticker and on the certificate
Out of stock
about this work
In the context of our most recent public project with Sam Durant in Ghent, artlead joins forces with publisher Case Studyo to present a new lighbox edition by Sam Durant.
Sam Durant is best known for his iconic light boxes. For these works, Durant draws on an image archive of international protests and demonstrations from the early 20th century until today. The light boxes are based on hand-drawn signs that the artist found in photos of street protests. Light boxes are, of course, a typical medium from the world of advertising. By giving the personal phrases and slogans from historical protests an existence as a colourful light box, Sam Durant emphasises their necessity, and often also the humorous or utopian character of the messages.
For this new edition, Sam Durant chose the message DO GOOD THINGS! Moved to a domestic setting and into a cheerful pink-purple light box, DO GOOD THINGS! becomes a mantra that reminds us daily that we have to be the change we want to see.
about Sam Durant
Sam Durant is a multimedia artist whose works engage a variety of social, political, and cultural issues. Often referencing American history, his work explores the varying relationships between culture and politics, engaging subjects as diverse as the civil rights movement, southern rock music, and modernism.
Over the last twenty years, Durant has mined the image archives of international protests and demonstrations, from the early twentieth century to the present, as sources for drawings and large-scale lightbox signs. In the lightboxes, hand-drawn statements are transferred from the source photographs into a format typically associated with commercial signage and advertising. Spontaneous, rapid and subjective messages are transmitted through an informational display mode; and yet the statements achieve new urgency and power from their dispassionate conveyance. Durant channels and enhances the contrarianism, humour, utopianism or challenge embedded in each handwritten slogan. The tension between emotive content and minimalist form expands the meaning of each text – opening it to different inferences and possibilities.
(courtesy of Sadie Coles HQ)
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