The work of art, the gallery system, the history of art, and the social-cultural mantle which encloses and validates it all have long been regarded as separate entities which negotiate an ongoing collaborative relationship. However, this thesis contends that all formerly accepted limitations and structures of art can be disassembled to be repurposed as mutable and boundary-less raw materials of art practice. Simulating the mature career retrospective catalogue of the respected visual artist, Josh Morden problematizes these separate but correlating realms in order to pose the act of cultural production as a process of creative self-consumption. Authoring his own fame, interviews and mythology as a method to examine the psychological effect and intent surrounding
the discourse of art, he creates a recursive document presenting himself as the focus of his research, examining the intent and accomplishments of his artistic practice from a fictive third-party perspective. Utilizing cannibalization and appropriation as praxial methods of artistic production, he explores the questions surrounding meaning, intent and the nature of the endgame in the creation and theorization of art.