This volume attempts to demonstrate that the notion that visual recognition alone is insufficient to determine an object's materiality, forcing a re-examination of the materials used in making art. In this work, published concurrently with an exhibition at the Aspen Art Museum, the question of materiality is recontextualized -- through essays by Aspen Art Museum Director Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson and Peter Eeley, Visual Arts Curator of the Walker Art Museum -- as more than a mere struggle between content and form. Drawing on unconventional means of transformation, such as alchemy and magic, as a way to examine the metaphysical changes that occur when materials are used to conceptualize complex ideas.

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