Deciding to focus on a single material for a year, Rauschenberg chose the cardboard box—easily obtainable and discarded after fulfilling its mission to contain something. Rauschenberg relished the chance to work directly with "a material of waste and softness. Something yielding with its only message a collection of lines and imprinted like a friendly joke. A silent discussion of their history exposed by their new shapes." These inventive reliefs elevate the ordinary and acknowledge an unglamorous material that commonly sheathes something more precious as it travels across various spatial thresholds.

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