Frequency often feels like a precondition for certainty. A little like a refrigerator lined with cans of cola. A lot of something becomes a sort of stable affirmation of its belonging. But it also has a more aimless quality. The bargain bin at a discount store – a strange circumstantial pile, both full and empty at the same time. A different kind of proliferation, one that doesn’t necessarily dispense validation.
These vitrines house rubber facsimiles of ordinary objects. Partially filled boxes give structure to a haphazard arrangement of hollow cast forms. Braided belts, boat shoes, t-shirts, hats and high heels press against each other and their containers. They are loose ensembles that accessorize and characterize – costumes for everyday life, a kind of quotidian Comic Con. Larping to school, or to work, or to wherever else we pass the time. Main characters ready to save the day in their fetishistic approach to normalcy.
Opposite is an arrangement of negative forms, also in rubber. Tools for the reproduction of objects and their values. Similar depictions presented in sequence. They yield space but also instruct where to stand. Face to the wall or back up against it? Which side are you on? Shapes that usually make contact with the world here house and caress our psyches. The outside becoming the inside.
The choice of objects also plays its part. They all have their own strange histories, charting courses from specific to generic, from harmless to something more sinister, and back again. A flaglike decoration for signaling from ship to shore – an announcement of sickness on board – now dresses up birthday celebrations. A Polynesian torch brought west after war gets re-coded when it’s marched through the streets. Fence posts used to draw territorial lines also separate seemingly identical suburban lives. Ubiquity leads to misunderstanding or maybe it just erases particularity.
