The ordinary in (applied) art.

As an artist interested in the ordinary, saying this might seem heretical, but I suspect art itself can’t be ordinary—the absence might even be what separates applied art from contemporary art. I know that art is notoriously hard to define, but we could try to formulate at least a negative definition: If you take the ordinary out of the applied arts—the doors out of architecture, the readability out of typography, the meaning out of photography—you may as well end up with art. Removing the ordinary might even be a necessary precondition of art (just not a sufficient one). There is something speculative, explorative and presumptive in contemporary art contradicting any notion of ordinary. It makes it easier to say things that have not been said before, thus fulfilling the artist’s desire to be free, to speculate, search and interpret beyond the bounds of the ordinary and understood. And it stands to reason, that the absence of the ordinary is what makes art hard to read (as in “understand”). You can’t have one without the other.