(b. 1986, USA), Lives and works in New York
Vierkant sets out to challenge the distinctions between object and document, the virtual and material, along with our existing ideas on authorship and propriety. His work spans a variety of media: co-existing photographic or sculptural techniques with unconventional materials ranging from circulating JPEGs to the negotiated limits of patents and trademarks.
Central to this pursuit is the artist’s assertion that an object’s physical manifestation is no more or less consequential than its representations. For Vierkant, the representation itself can exist “without reference to the ‘original’, so that we can no longer identify anything as an “original copy”. This is most evident in his series, Image Objects, ongoing since 2011. These works are made as prints using contemporary commercial printing technologies commonly applied for advertising and luxury signage. Subsequently the works are documented in photographic images which are harshly and abstractly retouched, often to the point that the original object is more or less unrecognizable and the space of the installation itself appears blended with the object. The documentation of the art becomes a work in its own right, with object and image equally part of the overall work, calling into question the ability of the one to supersede the other, and collapsing notions of value.