EssayFa

A couple of years ago, it occurred to me that my wish list of objects had grown longer than usual. I realized that the problem was not that I was becoming increasingly materialistic, but that something larger in the culture was underfoot. For one, we were in the midst of an undeniable product design renaissance. Even the Cooper-Hewitt and MoMA at the time acknowledged this creative surge in two high-profile exhibitions (respectively, "National Design Triennial: Design Culture Now," March 7-August 6, 2000; and "Workspheres," February 8-April 22, 2001). But even more interesting to me was how increasingly these objects of my desire seemed to be finding me rather than the reverse. With dramatic improvements in consumer targeting and production technology, along with the explosion of cable television, the internet, and other media outlets, I realized that the new sensation that I was growing conscious of was life in what we've come to know as "the new economy." At the heart of this new phenomenon lied the heady belief that technology was going to dramatically raise the standard of living globally for all classes with better, customized products.

While the surge in product creativity is thrilling and luscious on the eyes, many things about it are unsettling. Substitute an innocuous item such as a sleek, new laptop for a patented genetic code, and you'll begin to realize the connection. The same market economy that is responsible for producing and introducing us to so many sexy, new products is also the engine that is creating commodities out of our genetic material, our oceans, and our outer space. This interconnectedness exists in an economy as it does in an ecosystem of life forms. But what is unique about the new economy is that when you combine the trend towards market globalization, our utopian expectations towards technology, and the furious drive to commodify just about every significant development (before it's ready to come off the testing block), the consequences of any serious mistakes are far more reaching. The recent Enron accounting scandal and the dot com bust illustrate the price we pay for practicing blind faith over critical awareness in matters of the economy. Only now, after the fact, is the new economy hype starting to appear as but a mere campaign of persuasion in overdrive, as slickly packaged as a political button. As new technologies impose new standards of efficiency on businesses--forcing many of them to downsize, even the notion of job security is gradually becoming a relic of the past.

Like many consumers who crave the newest techie toy on the block, I, too, want to believe in the promise that new technologies will improve our lives. On the other hand, the same digital software that I use to draw can be used as a tool of crime with a bit of practice and a flair for detail. And, as much as I look to the mapping of the human genome for new medical cures, and hope that we learn more about our existence through the advancing exploration of our oceans and outer space, I can't help but worry about the private patenting of human genes and its effect upon medical research, or about the environmental, let alone political, implications of commodifying our oceans and skies.

How do the advances in cyberspace and production affect our copyright system, intellectual property, and creativity? And what about the manner in which the new economy targets children as consumers? What are the consequences of introducing them to product lust at younger and younger ages, or to countless products that continue to caricature gender roles? Or, what about the way in which markets co-opt fresh and radical art forms, and then spit them back at us as unrecognizable mainstream widgets?

The tension between wanting to believe in the promise of the new economy while questioning many of its practices is the subject of this exhibition. From the beginning of this project, it made the most sense to me to work with materials and formats that speak in the seductive language of the marketplace. I chose materials that can project either an innocence, ordinariness, or surface comeliness in order to lure viewers in the same way that markets operate on us. By employing wall paintings (with their references to signs and billboards), beads (with their allusions to preciousness and their history as currency), decals and commercial buttons (popular commercial tools), and digital recreations of common items (memo notes, credit and ID cards), I have tried to make visual this ambiguity that seems to have no simple answers.