Claus Goedicke
Some Things
The History of Things
Who actually looks at them, the ordinary objects we handle every day, —soap, scissors, hammer? Even though there is a tendency today to make an aesthetic philosophy out of anything and everything, and then package it in increasingly refined designs, never before have everyday objects had a shorter lifespan, while the number of objects piling up around us has practically never been so large as it is now.
For a long time, Claus Goedicke has been examining the nature of these things, their appearance, our relationship to them, and our concept of them. He is interested in everything we use or consume, from plastic bottles to vegetables. In his most recent series, begun in 2007, he has turned to the basic elements of our daily lives, to all of the things we cannot do without, even though —or perhaps because —we use them without actually thinking about them. They include basic nutritional items, such as bread, butter, and eggs, as well as simple tools, from cutlery and hammers to scissors. We have already seen the charm that can emanate from the latter, in Walker Evans’ portfolio of photographs, produced in the mid-1950s, and about which he said, "... a hardware store is a kind of offbeat museum show for the man who responds to good, clear ‘undesigned’ forms."
Maren Polte, 2010
Who actually looks at them, the ordinary objects we handle every day, —soap, scissors, hammer? Even though there is a tendency today to make an aesthetic philosophy out of anything and everything, and then package it in increasingly refined designs, never before have everyday objects had a shorter lifespan, while the number of objects piling up around us has practically never been so large as it is now.
For a long time, Claus Goedicke has been examining the nature of these things, their appearance, our relationship to them, and our concept of them. He is interested in everything we use or consume, from plastic bottles to vegetables. In his most recent series, begun in 2007, he has turned to the basic elements of our daily lives, to all of the things we cannot do without, even though —or perhaps because —we use them without actually thinking about them. They include basic nutritional items, such as bread, butter, and eggs, as well as simple tools, from cutlery and hammers to scissors. We have already seen the charm that can emanate from the latter, in Walker Evans’ portfolio of photographs, produced in the mid-1950s, and about which he said, "... a hardware store is a kind of offbeat museum show for the man who responds to good, clear ‘undesigned’ forms."
Maren Polte, 2010
Ei, 2007
