Ictus Gallery, San Francisco, 2011

Through her work Conrad provokes the view to take a closer, more inquisitive look at the social edifices surrounding us. In doing so, Conrad reconnoiters the spaces between making and seeing, in the context of this tension between the signifiers of our systems and how we populate them. She focussed our attention on the levels of meaning carried within even the everyday objects surrounding us – mundane glorious shifting points of civilization.

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In a world of glowy things and trash, there is humor and identity. In a world of glowy things and trash, there is humor and identity. In a world of glowy things and trash, there is humor and identity.

I had a show, many years ago, because I wanted to ask myself, if plastic lasts forever in our environment, is it also archival? The answer is no because plastic degrades, and it’s fragile, and it gets dirty. But for the period of time the plastic maintained itself, several years in fact, and it was a fun and interesting question.

I’d been collecting packaging for several years. The shapes were so interesting, the materials: vacuum formed plastic, intricate cardboard, fascinating shapes for the thing you wanted to nestle in, so it could survive its trajectory from wherever it was made, to however it got to you. So you have the experience of opening the box.

The acquisition of experience becomes the experience of acquisition. The more expensive and the more designed the object was - the more electronic - yes, this was the moment that the smartphone leapt onto the stage of human reality - the more it was coddled in packaging.

At first I thought this was my subject, but as I worked, I discovered sewn plastic sheeting, and that those forms, which each had names like Airport Hotel, to indicate their states of limbo, of bardo, become medical, like an x ray, or commercial, like a clothing store window display, when backlit. Ganged up together, the work spoke to bus stops, to store fronts, even to electrical closets.

As I move along in my work, I’m interested in taking these ephemeral things and making something permanent out of them.