4
Amina Ross, Chadwick Rantanen, Sean Donovan

The symbolic meaning of the number four reveals itself in ancient symbolism, art history, religion, and philosophy. The work by the three artists in 4 are comprised of multiple components. The numerical aggregate of these elements can be reduced to the single digit 4 – representing creation, stability, the body, the illusion of time, and earthly balance, as well as other concepts relevant to the exhibition.

It should be noted that they’re also exist diagonal relations, as it were, between the opposing corners of this rectangle. First of all, between articulation and derivation: if the existence of an articulated language is possible, with words and juxtaposition, interlocking or arranging themselves in relation to one another, Then it is so only in so far as the words of that language — starting from the original values from the simple act of designation that was their basis — have never ceased to move further and further away, by a process of derivation, does acquiring a variable extension; hence an access that cuts across the whole quadrilateral of language; and it is along this line that the state of the language is marked off: its articulative capacities are determined by the distance it has moved along the line of derivation; such a reading defines both its historical posture and its power of discrimination. The other diagonal runs from the proposition back to the original, that is, from the affirmation at the heart of every act of judgment to the designation implied by any act of nomination; it is along this axis that the relation of words to what they represent is established: here it becomes apparent that words never speak anything other than the being of representation, but that they always name something represented. The first diagonal marks the progress of a language from the point of view of its specifications; the second endless interleaving of language and representation — the duplicating process which is the reason why the verbal sign is always representing a representation. On this latter line the word functions as a substitute (with its power to represent); on the former, as an element (with its power to make combinations and break them down).

• excerpt from The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (Les mots et les choses: Une archéologie des sciences humaines), 1966 by Michel Foucault