2017
20 copies
Signed and numbered
28×28×5 cm
11×11×2 in.
10 paper folders
10 sheets of 3 mm UV printed plexiglass
Canvas folder and slipcase




“Object/Subject/Slides” are composed of ten individual folders, housed in a clothbound box. Each folder contains three elements: a transparent “slide”, a monochrome print, and a text document. Upon the slide is a UV printed picture of an object taken from an “Object/Subject/Painting”, Micka’s series of hyper-real paintings after photos of objects featured in past auction catalogs. The “slides” are mechanical/digital reproductions of the original catalog photographs, the source images for Micka’s paintings. The selected objects reproduced are items displaying an impressive degree of skilled labor through technical craftwork. Objects of another era. Resold at auction as luxury objects they express the consolidation and accumulation of wealth in their materiality.

The “slides” in this publication allows the reproductions to be manipulated as the images seem to float over the color monochrome prints. The text documents, on page one of each of the ten folders, are copies of the original auction catalog’s lot descriptions.

“Object/Subject/Slides” repurpose the image. By allowing the object to resurface again, the “slide” becomes a shadow of the original. This move allows one to apply to the images a historical distance, a critical perspective.

From Magritte to Baldessari the question of the picture and its many layers of representation has been long persisted in the project of making the invisible visible. “Object/Subject/Slides” by Sean Micka at Three Star Books materializes what John Berger once described, different “ways of seeing”.


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