16 Sculptures

16 Sculptures

While he had published several texts of object-oriented writing previously on his website and in selected art and literary publications, 16 Sculptures is considered to be Jeppesen's first major work in the genre. 16 Sculptures was originally commissioned by curator Stuart Comer for the 2014 Whitney Biennial. 16 Sculptures manifested in the form of a book published by Publication Studio, but also an audio installation, in which visitors to the gallery sat in chairs and put on black glasses that blocked out their vision and listened to audio recordings—or "evocations"—of the texts on headphones. Jeppesen selected sixteen sculptures from throughout the history of art to re-create in the medium of language. The style of the resulting texts ranges considerably, including monologues, dialogues, rants, songs, poems, and epiphanies, among other, more hybrid or inventive forms, all of them evasive of the tropes of traditional art criticism. For example, in his re-creation of the Venus of Willendorf, Jeppesen adapts the dramatic monologue format, allowing the sculpture to speak.