Untitled study / Pairs
For Casco issues X: The Great Method

An image exploring the concept of the non-verbal IQ test. Household objects are displayed in two groups. The test for the viewer is to match them in pairs. However, the objects can be categorised according to two conflicting parameters: either function or form.

U.E: “I was commissioned to create an image for the cover of a book on methodologies in art, published by the Casco centre for art, design and theory in Utrecht. I used the structure of facing pages of a book to create a nonverbal IQ test. I put objects on page A and page B. Formally this set up suggests an assessment test, the viewer feels subconsciously triggered to order the objects in some way. But there’s a dilemma. You could arrange the objects by function – a pan and an egg, a table tennis bat and a ping-pong ball, an apple and an apple slicer. But it would be equally logical to order them by form. One object looks like another, they are arranged with very dominant ‘image rhymes’, and this is so evident that it’s hard to ignore. Arranged in this way, the frying goes with the table tennis bat, the egg with the ping-pong ball, and so on. This kind of dilemma interested me because it recurs in the subject matter of the book.”