Triple Canopy, Pointing Machines (Chestertown, Maryland) III, pigmented inkjet print, edition of 3 with 2 APs, 15″ × 22 ½”

Triple Canopy’s contribution to the 2014 Whitney Biennial is Pointing Machines, an installation titled after the simple eighteenth-century measuring tool for reproducing sculpture in stone or wood with a system of adjustable rods and needles. The installation consists largely of reproductions—by handcraft, 3-D printing, and photography—of paintings and a colonial-era wash basin stand, once part of the wide-ranging collection of “Naïve Painting” and early American furniture of Colonel Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch. Triple Canopy asks how the meaning of artworks shifts as they are commissioned, made, collected, disowned, replicated, photographed, exhibited, and published, taking into account the role of circulation systems as varied as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and eBay. The installation connects the history of reproduction by technical and artistic means to the recent, remarkable collapse of the difference between objects and information. It is part of an issue of the magazine, also titled Pointing Machines, that continues the reproduction and circulation of the displayed objects beyond the museum’s walls, and includes essays, artist projects, discussions, and performances.

View and read about the installation here. Read the essay, which was first published in the Whitney Biennial exhibition catalogue and introduces the issue of the magazine, here. View and read the contents of the issue here.