Trigger Items - Illusions In discount shopping

Discount shopping, although underappreciated as a reflection of American culture, has become intricately intertwined with who we are as Americans and the type of people that we are
becoming. My project presents the viewer with ready-made images from inside a store and comments on an aspect of daily living that is important to today’s culture. My work places the viewer in a particular environment and presents them with images to which they are free to assess meaning. Many of these trigger items are termed “compulsive merchandise” and are strategically placed throughout the store. The luring and distraction a shopper experiences is shared by all discount shoppers.
As I began thinking more critically about the elements that had been put into play in order to elicit my participation as a shopper, I found that much of my experience had been pre-fabricated. As a customer, I assume that I am choosing to steer my cart in a particular direction, when, in fact, my path has been somewhat pre-planned for me based on the complex store layout. The corporations who own these stores compile evidence that reveals insight into their customers’ desires. They then use this data to continuously modify their floor plans and maintain the illusion of a “new” experience. By employing diversions to the consumer’s attention, corporations can cause them to wander down aisles that perhaps they would not have gone down if not for the strategic placement of products on end-caps; here the consumer is confronted with an experience that they had not anticipated. Virtually every aspect of these stores has been conceptualized without the consumer being aware of it; hence, their “personal experience” is actually an illusion.
Through the use of found objects and cross disciplines, inspired by Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper John’s research, I am able to bring the viewer’s peripheral observations as well as their pre-cognitive experiences to their observation of my work. I incorporate objects from a discount-shopping store into my work by cutting them at angles and attaching them to the surface of my work. I then complete the object as a painting. Having the objects painted abstractly will trigger the viewer’s memory of pre-cognitive observations. When the viewer looks at an object from a distance, their mind will perceive what they have previously experienced based on memories from firsthand knowledge. Only upon closer inspection will the viewer realize that they did not see what they thought they had seen. This will cause them to stop and think about what they actually did see and examine it on a closer level.
This simulation duplicates the viewer’s discount-shopping experience by causing them to recollect scenes from their peripheral vision that have been stored in their long-term memory. As they view my work in the gallery, their memory of discount shopping images will be triggered and they will suddenly recognize a familiar but incomplete image.

Location: Step Gallery