I summon the word ‘transcendental’ aware of the many metaphysical meanings put upon it through time, but intent on returning to the root of the word, for the elegant way it conveys the ability of something to surpass others of its kind. This inspiring word evokes visionary evolution, ways to see beyond and go beyond known precedents. Transcendental Objects represents the essence of the founding vision of the gallery by, quite simply, revealing the synergy that results from an object’s ability to physically do something while simultaneously meaning something. We readily accept that paintings mean something, and cabinets do something, but it has also been our habit to treat these respective abilities as mutually exclusive - unnecessarily. This exhibition promotes the manifestation of the intersection of conceptual and physical power through objects that embody it.

We use art as a tool to help us find ways to think differently about our world. Since the early 20th century, we have gradually been learning anew to explicitly apply the power of art to the objects we interact with in our daily lives. I say ‘anew’ advisedly as the marriage of object and idea is an old one - shells as currency, bread as the divine, a ring as betrothal. The difference between the ancient and the contemporary iteration of this marriage is not only the prospective sophistication and range of the ideas and objects involved, but also systematic application and purposeful manipulation. Seurat & Signac were systematic in the construction of their Pointillist paintings, as Duchamp was purposeful with his readymades, and yet the fruit of their efforts remained trapped in an art world dialogue about the limits of art. With Transcendental Objects the conversation grows beyond art and becomes accessible to the real world on its own terms, in its natural format, through functional objects we encounter and interact with, unmediated by specialized context.

Within the field of design, the dominant approach of Modernism as an aesthetic and ethic suffocated the strategy of intertwining functional forms with symbolism. Aspiring to mass market audiences, tending to pragmatic reductivist forms, and engaged in a Greenbergian dialogue, Modernism in design was antithetical to carrying symbolic weight. Modernism’s long march that began on the road to the Bauhaus ended in a sprawling parking lot in front of Ikea. Between the two, a broad highway paved over the modest meander of William Morris, Siegfried Bing and the Wiener Werkstätte, funneling their course to a trickle yet remaining steady enough to fill the reservoir of the Studio Craft Movement. Fringes of the stylistically starved masses realized that while Big Box design may be practical, it is dispiritingly banal. From this realization, the green shoots of transcendence sprout. Given the slightest opportunity, our nature is to crave, seek and nurture the novelty that ubiquity smothers. Transcending the familiar and known is our perpetual temptation.

Whether the ‘known’ is embodied as a chair or a vase, it becomes transcendent by exceeding the mere function of the form, without denying it’s essential foundation. A canvas or a block of marble may transcend its objecthood by becoming a painting or a sculpture with the addition of meaning to materiality, but a painting or a sculpture may only add more layers of meaning to its already transcended nature or deny it through demotion that subverts its meaning. In this way, established art forms find themselves transcendentally disadvantaged while functional forms are fertile ground. A transcendental object conveys ideas or tells a story, it grabs meaning from the ether and makes it real in the form of an object that has both a physical and conceptual function. While conforming to the convention of functional typologies, it simultaneously exists as symbolic representation - as such, it is unstable by virtue of holding multiple states at once. The transcendental object is inherently dynamic. The transcendental object is extra, it is hopeful, it aspires to more. It springs from the desire of the creator to share a vision by making it physically real, and constructively and practically so.

History has seen shades of this same phantasm of fantastical extravagance wander in and out of focus before – often at moments of peak productivity and, of course, when there are vast accumulated riches to support it. In our recent history there has been the Baroque era, Art Nouveau, and Surrealism. Such all-encompassing aesthetics encrust all they touch with representations of their ideas. This force is once again having a powerful resurgence through the re-integration of craft and design thinking by people who trained professionally as artists, during a nurturing and indulgent moment in history, and fueled by patrons who are the beneficiaries of disproportionate accumulations of wealth. May this exhibition help shed light on its fresh and vigorous growth.

- Damon Crain