2012.37 Uri Aran, Untitled (I Love You) | DMA Staging Content Management System

GENERAL DESCRIPTION

In his drawings and videos, Uri Aran often plays with the human feelings that we project onto animals. Untitled (I Love You) captures a mundane scene of the artist rummaging through a shoebox full of aquatic toy animals. As the artist selects the first toy from the box, a whale shark figurine is presented to the camera and observed from all angles. The artist lovingly caresses the toy, and after a thorough visual assessment professes “I love you” emphatically to the whale figurine. This seemingly absurd exercise is repeated several times with different toys. With each iteration, the artist treats the figurines with varying degrees of enthusiasm, care, and respect. In so doing, he creates an arbitrary hierarchy among the animals that mirrors how we as human beings ascribe equally arbitrary values to our relationships with other people, pets, and possessions through language.

Excerpt from

Anna Katherine Brodbeck, ed., TWO X TWO X TWENTY: Two Decades Supporting Contemporary Art at the Dallas Museum of Art (Dallas: Dallas Museum of Art), 2018, 203.

NOTES

Did not get object file- streamlined process, no provenance. CLC, 12/4/18.

Catalogue essays

Artist/designers

Cultures

Geography

Process/materials

Historical periods

Individuals

Subject terms

RELATED OBJECTS

PROVENANCE

AUDIO ASSETS

VIDEO ASSETS

IMAGE ASSETS

WEB RESOURCES

Walker~Check out an extended essay discussing the relationship between Aran's work and the legacy of Belgian conceptual artist Marcel Broodthaers.

ARCHIVAL RESOURCES

FUN FACTS

TEACHING IDEAS

RULES

Apply to objects where number equals 2012.37

General Description

In his drawings and videos, Uri Aran often plays with the human feelings that we project onto animals. Untitled (I Love You) captures a mundane scene of the artist rummaging through a shoebox full of aquatic toy animals. As the artist selects the first toy from the box, a whale shark figurine is presented to the camera and observed from all angles. The artist lovingly caresses the toy, and after a thorough visual assessment professes “I love you” emphatically to the whale figurine. This seemingly absurd exercise is repeated several times with different toys. With each iteration, the artist treats the figurines with varying degrees of enthusiasm, care, and respect. In so doing, he creates an arbitrary hierarchy among the animals that mirrors how we as human beings ascribe equally arbitrary values to our relationships with other people, pets, and possessions through language.