Michael Craig-Martin, "On Being an Artist", London, 2015, page 176
This wall sculpture presents a monumental rotary dial phone, its shape outlined using thin iron bands, with bright red rectangular layers superimposed over it. The densely clustered forms invade each other’s space, thus echoing M.C. Escher’s repetitive and interlocking patterns. As Michael Craig-Martin explains: “With the traditional telephone, it was clear what it was used for: there was a handle with a part you spoke into and a part you listened to. Its form was a picturing of the process involved, and you could understand how it worked. Nowadays, you can do practically anything with a phone... The principal function is not expressed in the form.” Through this easily recognizable manufactured object, Craig-Martin offers a meditation on the transiency and inevitable obsolescence of modern technology.
