2015.32.1
Best Buy
Artist
Dean Kessmann
Title
Best Buy
Creation Date
2005
Century
21st century
Dimensions
34 x 24 in. (86.36 x 60.96 cm)
Classification
Photographs
Creation Place
North America, United States
Medium and Support
Archival Pigment Print on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag
Credit Line
Gift of the Artist
Copyright
This artwork may be under copyright. For further information, please consult the Museum’s
Copyright Terms and Conditions.
Accession Number
2015.32.1
The blooming, translucent shapes of Kessman’s photographs reveal a new perspective on a quotidian object: the plastic shopping bag. Its marketing message, printed on the bag, is obscured or morphed by the manipulation of its surface, whose detailed texture becomes the dominant focus of the images. Kessman shows how mesmerizing the bag becomes under physical and optical transformation. Using a flatbed scanner, he defamiliarizes the bag by compressing it into something resembling a blob, stain, or drop caught in liquid suspension and evoking a membrane or an x-ray. Whether Kessman’s focus is on elevating the ordinary to the beautiful or on criticizing consumerism and waste, his “brand of objectification,” writes critic Nord Wennerstrom, “offers a fresh acknowledgment of the moral ambiguity inherent in ‘environmentally conscious’ consumerism.”