ABSTRACT
Artist Will Maclean is primarily known for his boxes, sculptural assemblages or light relief works. According to Giorgio Agamben, the art object can in no way replace the genuine transmissible element of a living culture because the act of transmission and the cultural item being transmitted are inseparable. Critical theory has shown, especially in the writings of Fredric Jameson, that the elements of Modernism and Postmodernism may be all but inseparable: the difference between the two movements’ lies in the relation between the work of art and the dominant ideology of the time. Curiosity and wonder are elicited in the presence of the weird, the marvellous or the strange. One of Maclean's favoured methods is counter-narrative – his works will often contain elements of story which can be unravelled to form linearity or content which can then be re-read as form with a kind of augmented insight or enlightenment.
