Your Cart is Empty, Latex Paint on Wall, 30" x 24"
Your Cart is Empty
Solo Show @ Flynndog Gallery
208 Flynn Ave, Burlington, VT.
September 10th - October 31st, 2021
RE-E-VALU-ATE, 2021. Acrylic, Graphite, and Hardware on Plywood. 18" x 42"
Much has changed in the last two years, or so we like to think. Certainly, many of us have experienced disruptions to our daily lives – from the inconvenient to the tragic – and have had to adjust in a plethora of ways. And yet, many of the mainstays of modern American life remain intact. Three of these – inequality, consumption, and waste – remain as robust as ever, and it is these three concepts which are explored in Your Cart is Empty. Through the lens of shopping carts, trash containers, and other urban detritus, I challenge us to reexamine our relationships to objects, to content, and to our collective values.
All of the shopping carts (and cart components) included in this exhibition were found abandoned in Burlington in various states of dysfunction and disrepair. I was drawn to them initially as beautiful objects but grew to appreciate them as metaphors for something more. Simultaneously representing excess and scarcity, indulgence and desperation, homelessness and home-more-ness, these carts became proxies for my own inner conflicts, questions, and elusive aspirations.
I began incorporating trash containers and currency into the work as it evolved over time: trash containers as a logical end point to the consumption equation, and currency as the flawed means by which we tend to assign value. But the more I worked, the more the work kept changing – twisting, turning, growing, and then building upon itself – such that the exhibition can be seen as a glimpse into an ongoing process which, by nature, is forever incomplete.
All of the shopping carts (and cart components) included in this exhibition were found abandoned in Burlington in various states of dysfunction and disrepair. I was drawn to them initially as beautiful objects but grew to appreciate them as metaphors for something more. Simultaneously representing excess and scarcity, indulgence and desperation, homelessness and home-more-ness, these carts became proxies for my own inner conflicts, questions, and elusive aspirations.
I began incorporating trash containers and currency into the work as it evolved over time: trash containers as a logical end point to the consumption equation, and currency as the flawed means by which we tend to assign value. But the more I worked, the more the work kept changing – twisting, turning, growing, and then building upon itself – such that the exhibition can be seen as a glimpse into an ongoing process which, by nature, is forever incomplete.
Trash Pedestal (Detail), 2021. Latex Paint on Plywood.
