The Aesthetic of Abandoned Objects

The Aesthetic of Abandoned Objects presents work by Thornton Dial and Sanford Kogan. Both artists build from cast-off materials. Both find that the history inside an object does not disappear when the object does.

Dial is a self-taught artist with a well-regarded body of work shown in major museums. His assemblages — wire, cloth, metal, and wood — carry race and survival inside them. He didn’t choose discarded materials because they looked interesting. He chose them because they meant something. His objects confront the viewer with what was never supposed to last.

Kogan’s practice is grounded in FroiDesign — Found and Repurposed Objects of Industrial Design. He picks up what factories left behind and finds something worth looking at. His sculptures make you see old machine parts differently. His photographs take text and push it past words into image. His lighting works bring that same eye into space. He treats reinterpretation as a productive act, not a secondary one.

Together, Dial and Kogan invite audiences to reconsider the lifecycle of objects and the stories embedded within material culture. The exhibition offers a timely reflection on the beauty that emerges from what society overlooks.