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Untitled

2016
Not on view
To create Untitled, Tonsfeldt peeled away the skin-like layers of diffusion and prism film through which the images on a flat screen television are normally projected. When these layers are removed, the LCD display still functions, but improperly: white visual data is invisible but black and color can still be seen against the monitor's lighting grid. Onto a wrinkled bit of black clothing inserted into the television, Tonsfeldt projects a moving image of a hand manipulating a light that makes the monitor appear to breathe. Surrounded by other bits of fabric and organic material such as seeds, vine tendrils, and grape stems, the assemblage has a hypnotic, science fiction quality--as if the viewer is looking back from the future onto a carcass of direct, unmediated experience, somehow still flickering with life.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Untitled
  • Artist: Josh Tonsfeldt (American, born Independence, Missouri, 1979)
  • Date: 2016
  • Medium: Artist-modified LCD television with digital video, garments, dried vegetation, and epoxy resin

  • Dimensions: Overall: 29 × 17 1/2 × 3 in. (73.7 × 44.5 × 7.6 cm)
  • Classifications: Variable Media, Sculpture
  • Credit Line: Purchase, Henry Nias Foundation Inc. Gift, 2019
  • Object Number: 2019.189
  • Rights and Reproduction: © Josh Tonsfeldt
  • Curatorial Department: Photographs

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