SAN ANTONIO, TX.- The San Antonio Museum of Art presents Readymade Remix: New Approaches to Familiar Objects, a new exhibition that explores how contemporary artists transform everyday materials into compelling, conceptually rich works of art.

Curated by Lana Meador, Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Readymade Remix will be on view in the Contemporary II Gallery from April 12, 2025, through April 12, 2026.

Found objects, household items, and manufactured goods are often seen in art exhibitions today, but that was not always the case. In 1917, French artist Marcel Duchamp (under the pseudonym R. Mutt) infamously submitted a common urinal as a sculpture titled Fountain to the Society of Independent Artists in New York. The sculpture was rejected for not being “a work of art.” Duchamp’s presentation of an everyday, mass-produced, functional object became known as a “readymade.” His use of prefabricated materials privileged the artist’s ideas and choices, rather than technical skill or labor, and shifted ordinary objects into new contexts and significance.

Drawn from SAMA’s collection, the works in this exhibition reframe the readymade to transform the familiar through acts such as mixing, deconstructing, and repeating. Pushing the readymade beyond Duchamp’s concept, these artists imbue their work with new and layered meanings that explore memory, culture, identity, spirituality, and personal and collective histories.

“The artists in Readymade Remix challenge the boundaries between art and everyday life. Their work asks us to reconsider the role of ordinary materials in shaping cultural narratives,” said Meador. “By deconstructing, remixing, and recontextualizing ordinary objects, they invite us to see the familiar in entirely new ways, deepening our understanding of how meaning is constructed and reshaped over time.”

The exhibition features works by artists from around the country, including Matthew Angelo Harrison, EV Day, Chuck Ramirez, and Patrick Martinez. Matthew Angelo Harrison makes labor visible in a sculpture titled Beloved Worker (2023), a recent acquisition on view for the first time. Harrison encapsulated an Exxon worker’s hardhat in a block of clear resin that is imprinted with the form of an African mask, linking histories across time and space. EV Day’s dramatic installation Winged Victory (2002), another new addition to the collection, examines notions of femininity through a deconstructed red evening gown that is suspended in the air.