With an inventor’s imagination and a razor-sharp wit, Ariel Schlesinger creates new uses for mundane, utilitarian objects—like paper, cigarette lighters, and socks—animating things that are normally considered lifeless, if considered at all. Through his clever alterations, he personifies objects, drawing attention to their strangely moving fragility and beauty. In L’angoisse de la page blanche (The Anguish of the White Page) (2007), he places two sheets of white copy paper, whose corners are pressed against each other, on a low wooden table with a motor hidden underneath. Rotated by the motor, the papers spin in a slow, continuous circle, as if locked in a sad dance without beginning or end. In other whimsically inventive works, a single ash burns in seeming perpetuity in a cracked ashtray and an unsealed and soggy cardboard box somehow contains a puddle of water.