Sandra Doore

"The Paradox of Possessions"

May 21 – June 25, 2006

Increasingly, in our post-modern society, the answer to life’s mysteries or, indeed, our sense of life’s purpose is inextricably tied to the fantasy of desire fulfillment -- acquisition has become the light that keeps our fears away. My newest body of work is inspired by April Lane Benson’s book I shop, therefore I am; compulsive buying and the search for self. Our attachment to mere objects is an attempt to fulfill our desire for stability and is instrumental in the ceaseless reshaping of selfhood . According to Robert E. Kleine, “changes in self-schemata and consumption go hand-in-hand with the cycling of an identity through its various phases“: an individual’s own self is in constant flux, yet we continue to invest in its tenability. I propose that commodity fetishism affects the human psyche by complicating our sense of self-schemata. In consumer culture, identity is abandoned and a new one assumed as often and, it seems, as easily as our underwear in the morning.

In my work, this notion manifests itself by pulling and stretching expandable materials, such as nylon spandex fabric and cotton underwear, around metal frames such as a shopping cart, ladder, and soap dish holder. The combination of everyday objects with soft, often vacuum-tight voluminous pillow-like configurations create works suggestive of the familiar and the strange, and of intimacy and otherness. The juxtaposition of softer materials with harder creates a tension that reflects my inner turmoil to find a balance between the market-driven desire to possess material things and the societal conscience that ‘less is more”. This media driven schizophrenia is aggravated by the knowledge that the fulfillment of desires is not possible in a world where fulfillment is but consumerism’s unattainable promise.

Philosopher Fromm questions: “If I am what I have and if what I have is lost, who am I?”

Things define us through the act of acquiring them (According to Buddhism and quantum physics, nothing has intrinsic value -- the notion of value is but a social construct and functions, it seems, simply as a crutch in the justification of our existence). It is experience itself that I am interested in and that my work attempts to provide -- I am concerned with the manifestation of physical and psychological space. Space does not exist unless we give it form. Experience then becomes more important than the actual object and the objects are a catalyst to draw the viewer into a sensual experience.

Experience is the thread that defines who we are and unites as all.

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