LOST

LOST is an installation by Erik Brunetti first presented at O.K. Harris Works of Art in New York in 1996 and subsequently included in Art in the Streets at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, Los Angeles, in 2011.

Constructed through the accumulation and spatial organization of Xeroxed images and printed material, the work treats reproduction as both medium and subject. Images drawn from mass communication, political iconography, advertising, popular culture, and other circulating sources are removed from their original contexts and reorganized within an immersive visual field.

Individual images do not function as autonomous compositions. Their meaning is produced through adjacency, collision, recurrence, density, and scale. The photocopy becomes a means of destabilizing hierarchy: source images of differing origin and authority are rendered through the same reproductive process and returned to circulation under altered conditions.

LOST occupies an important position between Brunetti’s early graphic production and his later installation and archival practices. It establishes concerns that continue throughout his work: authorship under conditions of appropriation, the ideological function of images, repetition as a method of transformation, and the movement of visual language between subculture, commerce, mass media, and institutional space.

The Foundation maintains materials and documentation relating to the work, its original 1996 presentation, and its subsequent installation at MOCA. Research into the installation’s components, configurations, exhibition history, and surviving documentation continues as part of the Catalogue Raisonné.

Exhibition History

1996
LOST
O.K. Harris Works of Art, New York
Solo exhibition; curated by Ivan Karp

2011
Art in the Streets
The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, Los Angeles

Research & Exhibition Access

Documentation associated with LOST may be available for scholarly research, publication, and curatorial review. Exhibition proposals involving original or reconstructed components require advance assessment by the Foundation.

Research and exhibition inquiries:
archive@erikbrunettifoundation.org