“[My] punctuation pieces were wanting to inflect objects and spaces the way real punctuation inflects the abstract objects and spaces of written language.”
—Richard Artschwager
Corner Exclamation is among many sculptures by Artschwager that translate punctuation marks, borrowed from written language, into the three-dimensional world. Decontextualized from the written page, Artschwager uproots the multitude of emotions typically expressed by the exclamation point – those of anger, excitement, pain, and beyond, transferring the mute authority of flat punctuation to an interior environment. Installed at the intersection of two walls, an unexpected and underutilized area of the typical gallery, Corner Exclamation playfully embodies its grammatical function, interrupting space and time through its humorous and almost sensuous form, its physical silence contradicting the implications of its textual presence.
Artschwager's multiples offer visual and analytical contradictions, subversively engaging simultaneously with the vernaculars of Pop, Minimalism, and Conceptualism: the Pop derivation from utilitarian objects, the Minimal application of industrial materials, and the Conceptual impulse to engage with the ideological structures of language. Twisting established dichotomies of artistic and industrial production, Artschwager blurs the line between what is faux versus real, handmade versus manufactured, functional versus useless, and ordinary object versus high art.