(Nancy Lupo at Kristina Kite, Yuji Agematsu at Miguel Abreu)
"Our growing attraction to garbage makes a psychologic sense as we become hostages to the trauma of dealing with it, the deranged images of garbage spewing, animals asphyxiated, learning of its intravenous networks sprawling across unstoppable leaky pipes, garbage moved though our landscape sprawling veins..."
Continuing our interest in making Stuff as a technical word. Stuff is the eye goo of objects. Like eye goo, stuff's service is its waste, a continual sloughing, so we can remain fresh, clean. Stuff accumulates, piles, is shed. Stuff is quasi things, is transient, transactional. A disposable fork is, like, quintessential stuff. Stuff depletes, frequently, though not always, disposable. Stuff is like object-food, a storage of energy for consumption, use. Stuff differentiates itself from things because everyone is putting energy toward it not being a thing: Companies/consumers press for stuff's cheapness, the user wants it only for what it can do, then to get rid it of it as soon as possible after, a pressure for stuff to be biodegradable. Stuff's thingness is a problem.
If there is something abject, itchy, about the Lupo's installation it is because stuff is being forced to become thing, stitched like rafts, like the The Great Garbage Patch, which too is stuff becoming thing, object, and anxious.
If Agemtasu's trash is comforting, lovable, it is because the stuff has been already digested to waste, paradoxically less anxious than stuff because it doesn't have the anxiety of stuff's thingness, just waste, and repackaged in the safety of cellophane to return it once again to product, we find comfort in products.
See too: “May the Bridges I Burn Light the Way” at STANDARD (OSLO), Nancy Lupo at Swiss Institute, Nancy Lupo at 1857, Yuji Agematsu at Real Fine Arts, Yuji Agematsu at Artspeak