Kai Franz

The term fetish, from the Portuguese word feiticio, suggests an object possessed of a super(natural) quality. Freud wrote of a young man who fetishized the shine on the nose of a woman, but this luminous shine was perceivable only to the young man. It was his own projection.

What happens to objects as they move in and out of a museum’s database? Inside these glass vitrines, the silver works are held up to be consumed by our gaze, yet the objects also freeze, become inanimate. I am reminded of still-life paintings from a different time-they too come with a similarly fixed gaze: an uncanny charge, neither dead nor alive. Objects not useful, not useless. Objects, more or less precious, presented as rare commodities.

We follow these Gorham works during behind-the-scenes preparations for this exhibition, witnessing the types of touch, care, and attention they receive. Watching the conservation efforts, I notice the shine on the surface of the objects. The attention shifts, as though it is not the objects that are being polished, but the shine itself.

-Kai Franz