The knife that I used to butter my toast (and three that I didn't) (2001) display of four knives with handwritten inscription 11" x 14"
notes

      I have been pondering the fact that we attribute entirely different meanings to objects that are physically identical in every observable way. This selection among indistinguishable things puzzled me for a long time, though I understood it had something to do with context, but now I see it naturally relating to other topics that I had already been exploring. Many artworks can not be even identified by their aesthetic qualities at all, but instead as part of a narrative described in terms of their relationship to us in the context of presentation and in the particular historical path that brought the artist to make that work. That presentation context of the art world doesn't define the work, but instead singles it out as a work and not just a thing, just as the imposed contexts that I was fascinated with serve to destroy that kind of interpretive information even with things not entirely similar.
      The knife that I used ... is my first direct response to this idea. The significance of an object at the center of an admittedly mundane narrative is known only through the display's title, and the handwritten inscription. The ability to rightfully place this meaning on a single object is lost, the information of which knife it was has been destroyed through the non-differentiated display of the four knives. Meaning is simultaneously created and destroyed.