Shark's Pocket (a posthumous duchamp)
1992
24 x 15 cm overall
mixed media: sealed pocket made of genuine faux sealskin with undisclosed object hidden inside. On loan to the Museum of the Double.
Shark's Pocket is an attempt to answer the question: if sharks had pockets, what would they carry in them? It is a generic duchamp produced posthumously by the Museum of Forgery. As such it is part of the Museum's program of "excessioning"; that is, of creating works that are then credited to the oeuvres of appropriate artists living and dead.
These generic artworks are a simple extension of the western tradition of treating art as a kind of brand-name product. In the world of commerce, highly successful brand-name products often pass into usage as common nouns, despite the efforts of the parent corporations to prevent this from happening. Kleenex becomes kleenex, Band-Aids become bandaids. Little-k kleenexes are not so much objects as categories of objects whose boundaries fluctuate constantly. Similarly, Mona Lisa the brand-name Leonardo has long since given way to the generic category of "mona-lisas" (whose number includes, among many other items, Duchamp's own L.H.O.O.Q.). Thus, a small-d duchamp is any object that it makes sense to categorize as by Duchamp. In this respect, the many objects that Duchamp did not make himself but nominated as Duchamps are also generic duchamps.
Shark's Pocket is one of the items in the MOF Sample Box.
Shark's Pocket brochure 1993 [m]
24 x 15 cm overall
printed matter: card with text and photo of Shark's Pocket.