TOM HARPER

In Fresh Widow, the name a homophonic wordplay on french window, the artist creates a replica of a french window, whose panes have been removed and covered in black leather. He further instructed that the leather should be polished to a shine everyday like shoes. This fetishization of the window in his work, symbolised by the performative act of the shining of leather, like the shining of windows, is an ironic jab at the fetishization of the idea of the illusionistic representation of the window (and frames by association) in art history. Duchamp, by this “ironic reversal of the classic pictorial idea of the window” allowed for work to be seen past mere illusionistic representation and think about the ideas that an art object can engender that are divorced from this (Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen (Germany, 2012., p.87). His work and relationship to the window has influenced mine on several levels. The idea of creating a fetishized love-object for ironic effect in art is something I have done repeatedly in my own work. For Duchamp it was a performative act that rejects subjective representation in favour of a space that allows for further interpretation and reflection on an object, and in the same way for my work such as a broken window, it gives a leather on a french window frame or a broken glass rubbing a history and an identity of its own. An artwork that is open to wider interpretation is of key concern when trying to argue for a reappraisal of the idea of a broken window, or a crack in the wall. I am asking what they can represent, is it an item of protest, a reflection on the uncanny transformation of the mundane or something else. This ability to question, gives life to the artworks in question. Instead of staring into someone's else view, the viewer’s gaze is instead reflected upon themselves.