A handful of artists have co-opted other artists' finished artwork as material in the creation of a new piece. By erasing another artist's drawing or obfuscating another artist's work with a swath of paint, these artists have elevated their own gesture of inclusion by relegating another artist's work to the list of materials. In the late 1980's Martin Kippenberger constructed a series of 'Peter' sculptures, which were nods to functional objects that were, in turn, dysfunctional due to their misuse of materials. In the work Modell Interconti, 1987, the artist bought a small Gerhard Richter painting at market price and turned this highly valuable painting 'on its back', making it the top to his table. In this expensive and singular gesture, Kippenberger simultaneously deflates the value of the painting conceptually, but also in reality, as the price for a work by Kippenberger was (and still is) significantly less than a Richter painting.
In Gaylen Gerber's practice, he often paints over another artist's work with a monochromatic layer of paint, confronting issues such as authorship, collaboration and perception. The culturally significant artworks that Gerber has painted over include contemporary painting and sculpture, Italian designed objects, and traditional African artifacts. Alternately, Gaylen Gerber's practice also involves instances of providing a background for another artist's expression. In the Art Institute of Chicago's Focus exhibition of Gaylen Gerber and Stephen Prina, Gerber created a wall-sized grey painting, on top of which Prina's grey text piece was installed. By providing a support for Prina's work, Gerber's expression is masked and almost absent. The pamphlet for this exhibition further reiterates a dichotomy of transparency and obfuscation--a portion of the pamphlets was purposefully left blank, printed without the informational text.
- Martin Kippenberger: The Problem Perspective. Los Angeles: Cambridge, Mass: Museum of Contemporary Art ; MIT Press, 2008.
- Catherine Craft. Robert Rauschenberg. London: Phaidon Press, 2013.
- James Rondeau. Focus: Gaylen Gerber with Stephen Prina. Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2002.