Everything ever bought by anyone eventually ends up in a pile. Piles of T.V.s, cell phones, outmoded computers, snap together furniture, all a result of our consumer lifestyle. Commercials and print ads instill a level of incompleteness’ without these products, a must have if you are part of our society. What happens with all the stuff when it loses its appeal or another ad suggests we need the next bigger and better item?
Consumer Conquest: Like the Gigolo/Playa who must use and have sex with as many and the most attractive women he can find. Whole groups of Americans feel the same way about items you find at IKEA, Macy’s, Target or Wal-Mart. How many consumer items can I violate in a weekend or any typical Saturday? The lust for stuff to fill my residence is insatiable.
What is the time frame from the moment of purchase until the item is just another piece of junk that should go in a garage sale.
This idea of endless consumerism and the resulting pile of stuff that is accumulated has interested me for some time. Included are drawings and photographs I have been documenting, however the electric aspect for this project are three sculptures best described as breathing piles of consumer items. Each individual pile is made out of a latex shell. The pile inflates, slowly rising from a round tray, it balloons up and fills to maximum capacity when it is full the latex pile slowly breaths out and descends back to its original flat position. The object does this repeatedly in a slow breathing fashion. There are three of these breathing piles with accompanying drawings and photographs.
Description and Construction: The breathing pile is formed from toys, cell phones, model cars, train building sets with a thin sheet of plastic and latex pored over the pile creating a hollow mask. Inside the hollow latex are several computer cooling fans on a microcontroller timer. Each sculpture requires a 120 volt wall outlet and a 12 volt AC to DC converter. Each disk is 20 inches in diameter they sit on the floor with the drawings hung on the wall above the pieces. These sculptures will run the duration of the show as long as they have a current to operate the fans. -- Stacey Farrar