Modernist design, that radical and iconoclastic break with the past, is now itself a thing of the past. Perhaps sufficiently so that over the last few years, artists have been treating modernist designs as icons themselves, and incorporating them—sometimes literally and often conceptually—into their own work. These recombinations and modifications result in an entirely unique mix: a meta-modernism in which the original source is changed, self-referential, abstracted. Using classic elements in new configurations, artists from across the world are making original works of art that comment on the claims of the past in light of the complexities of the present.

The artists included in MetaModern, most of whom were born in the 1960s, question the reverence accorded to classic modernism. Too young to have grown up eating their breakfast cereal from a Russel Wright spoon while seated in an Eames molded chair, these artists appropriate the language of the modernist movement critically, using it to interrogate the meaning of style and its relationship to history.

The artists include Conrad Bakker, Constantin Boym, Kendell Carter, Jordi Colomer, William Cordova, Elmgreen & Dragset, Fernanda Fragateiro, Terence Gower, Brian Jungen, Olga Koumoundouros, Jill Magid, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Dorit Margreiter, Josiah McElheny, Edgar Orlaineta, Gabriel Sierra, Simon Starling, Clarissa Tossin, Barbara Visser, and James Welling.