{"id":1856506,"date":"2026-03-31T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1856506"},"modified":"2026-03-31T09:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T06:00:00","slug":"we-asked-ben-lerner-to-name-one-artwork-he-considers-a-revelation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1856506","title":{"rendered":"We Asked Ben Lerner to Name One Artwork He Considers a \u201cRevelation\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Install-Angle-1.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n

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We asked the beloved novelist, whose book <\/em>Transcription is out in April, to single out one artwork that impacted him.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\n\tI thought of Rose Salane\u2019s 60 Detected Rings<\/em> (1991\u20132021) when asked to inaugurate a column called Revelations because the word is so close to \u201crevaluations,\u201d and what the art I love reveals to me is how our measures of value might be challenged and transformed. Salane bought the rings in 60 Detected Rings <\/em>at an estate sale; they\u2019d been collected by a woman named Jill Benedict, who, using a metal detector, had gleaned them from the beaches of Atlantic City over a period of 30 years. Salane had the rings evaluated by a lab that recorded the electromagnetic frequency of the metal (when detected) and the ring\u2019s \u201cmelt value\u201d; she also had psychics interpret\u2014reveal\u2014what they could about the rings\u2019 previous owners. Salane then mounted the rings in cases and captioned them with these scientific and economic and psychometric classifications. I first saw the resulting artwork at the New Museum triennial in 2021, but I think of it often.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat value did these rings once hold for those who wore them? The pathos of the \u201cmelt value\u201d is that the metals of these objects are decidedly not precious. The spiritualists\u2019 speculations about the histories of the rings\u2019 wearers are ways of imagining sentimental value in conflict with the meager price the materials would fetch. What value did the rings hold for Benedict? What did Salane pay for them? What did she pay to have the archive assayed by the lab, by the spiritual workers? And how much does it cost to collect 60 Detected Rings<\/em>, what is the \u201cvalue added\u201d when these materials become Salane\u2019s work of art?\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Rose Salane: 60 Detected Rings (1991-2021) (Person 36-40)<\/em>, detail, 2021.<\/span>Courtesy Carlos\/Ishikawa, London\/\u00a9Rose Salane<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tA metal detector senses disturbances in the electromagnetic field caused by an object; as I looked at the rings I also detected small disturbances, fluctuations in value that seemed to make these rings vibrate with possibility. The newly auratic rings felt haunted\u2014by those who wore them, by Benedict. Salane makes the rings\u2014which might have been dismissed as litter\u2014appear like small archaeological finds or religious relics. I think of Robert Smithson\u2019s Monuments of the Passaic<\/em>, his reading of industrial sites as \u201cruins in reverse\u201d and \u201cmemory-traces of an abandoned set of futures\u201d; Salane offers a more intimate version of this artistic anthropology. There is also a postapocalyptic feel here, as though Atlantic City had been washed away; \u201capocalypse\u201d of course means \u201crevelation.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAll these oscillations between new and old, trash and treasure generate a little wave of possibility. Salane achieves something I aspire to in writing: a reframing, a recontextualization, that reminds us that our world might be weighed differently. Great works of art melt value so that it can be reformed. \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Install-Angle-1.jpg?w=1024″] We asked the beloved novelist, whose book Transcription is out in April, to single out one artwork that impacted him.\u00a0 I thought of Rose Salane\u2019s 60 Detected Rings (1991\u20132021) when asked to inaugurate a column called Revelations because the word is so close to \u201crevaluations,\u201d and what the art I love reveals […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1856506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1856506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1856506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1856506\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1856506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1856506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1856506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}