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Just So
Artist
Tony Feher
(Born 1956, United States; died 2016, United States)
Date2002
Medium28 clear glass bottles with white plastic screw caps, distilled water and food dye
DimensionsOverall: 15 1/8 x 102 x 5 1/2 in. (38.42 x 259.08 x 13.97 cm)
Overall: 7 1/4 x 2 1/4 x 2 1/4 in. (18.42 x 5.72 x 5.72 cm)
Overall: 7 7/8 x 102 x 5 1/2 in. (20 x 259.08 x 13.97 cm)
Overall: 7 1/4 x 2 1/4 x 2 1/4 in. (18.42 x 5.72 x 5.72 cm)
Overall: 7 7/8 x 102 x 5 1/2 in. (20 x 259.08 x 13.97 cm)
Credit LineCollection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Gift of the Director's Council, 2004
Object number2004.1
Status
On viewCopyright© Estate of Tony Feher
Category
Label TextTony Feher made art from the things most people discard. One category of detritus he gravitated to was packaging: water bottles, jam jars, and plastic bags. Emptied of their original contents, containers struck him as vessels of possibility, open to surprising new meanings and purposes.
The Modern’s Just So, 2002, consists of twenty-eight clear glass bottles, each containing a different volume of water tinted blue. The bottles are lined up in a horizontal row on a shelf, spaced equidistantly apart. They are ordered to as to offer the appearance of a gently rising and falling blue wave. Feher’s use of commonplace, nontraditional art materials places him squarely in the tradition of the Duchampian readymade, as well as linking him to the 1960s Italian Arte Povera (literally “poor art”) movement.
Feher’s bottles make no explicit reference to anything outside of their own material presence, yet their forms can still appear slightly anthropomorphic. They might evoke a community of individuals, alike but unique. The ephemerality of the artist’s materials speaks also to states of transience, vulnerability, and fragile survival—conditions that the artist was acutely aware of as a witness to the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s. (Feher himself was HIV positive.)
The Modern’s Just So, 2002, consists of twenty-eight clear glass bottles, each containing a different volume of water tinted blue. The bottles are lined up in a horizontal row on a shelf, spaced equidistantly apart. They are ordered to as to offer the appearance of a gently rising and falling blue wave. Feher’s use of commonplace, nontraditional art materials places him squarely in the tradition of the Duchampian readymade, as well as linking him to the 1960s Italian Arte Povera (literally “poor art”) movement.
Feher’s bottles make no explicit reference to anything outside of their own material presence, yet their forms can still appear slightly anthropomorphic. They might evoke a community of individuals, alike but unique. The ephemerality of the artist’s materials speaks also to states of transience, vulnerability, and fragile survival—conditions that the artist was acutely aware of as a witness to the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s. (Feher himself was HIV positive.)