clipping from the New York Times Style Magazine, Design, Fall 2008 issue, from the article The Unbrand, about the Muji design line of products and their design adviser, Naoto Fukasawa who recently curated the above-mentioned exhibition. A simple google search will return plenty of results for further investigation into… what is normal? such as these articles: here and here

[thanks Angie]

it appears the phrase “the new normal” is actually quite a popular phrase to describe or construct notions around for contemporary fine art practice (see the new normal mixery).

However this title from an article written by Tom Holert and published February 2006 in the art world’s glossy monthly, ArtForum (60% ads, 30% paperweight, 9% writing, 1% blog-worthy), takes its origin from an exhibition that took place at the end of 2005 titled “On Normality: Art in Serbia 1989-2001″ and refers back to the word normality, which the author says in the 1990s in Serbia

became a kind of ideological password, part of a code meant to sublimate societal antagonisms through the invocation of “the nation” or of a postcommunist version of capitalism, or both.

full article on Flickr – page 1, page 2