Flatness, monochrome and shipping materials are some of the primary visual notions that come to mind when exposed to Sherrie Levine’s Parchment Knot: 3, 2003. A closer look reveals the naturally formed knots on the surface of the wood filled with acrylic paint. This ready-made method elevates the ordinary and cheap plywood material into a meticulously crafted art object. Being commonly considered as imperfections, the knots on the surface of Parchment Knot: 3, 2003 represent Levine’s rejection of modernist aesthetic canons, and instead suggest an inherent sublime quality in the most banal objects. This Duchampian re-contextualization of the found object, questions simultaneously the originality and identity of the art object. Plywood, commonly used as crating material to protect artwork, refers to the direct relationship it has to the art world. Used as a canvas by Levine, it provides the viewer with a different perspective on the status of the material.

Sherrie Levine started challenging concepts of appropriation in the early 1980s when she explicitly re-photographed works by famous photographers such as Edward Weston and Walker Evans. Her work addresses the limitations within modernist cannons and interrogates the notions of authenticity and representation.