Throughout one wall, a shelf shows a set of relationship self-help books, together with Divorce for Dummies. On the ground under, a jade-green dustpan cradles the shards of a damaged wine glass and its puddling, blood-red ooze. Titled “Dissolution” (all works 2024), this lifesize ceramic sculpture — together with two dozen different on a regular basis objects faithfully depicted in clay — belies the breezy title of Home Bliss, ceramic artist Stephanie H. Shih’s solo present at Alexander Berggruen gallery.
The exhibition contains a assortment of sculptures that depict name-brand, mass-market American merchandise plucked from the cabinets of a ’90s collective consciousness, gesturing towards private betterment with glimpses of turmoil. Every merchandise embodies a tangle of pressures and edicts of eating regimen tradition, well being and sweetness requirements, gendered expectations, intercourse, and consumerism. Shih painstakingly crafted every family object, pharmacy discover, and grocery merchandise to match the real-life dimensions and general really feel of the product and packaging. The tales embedded in these charged, chosen objects trace at relationships, conveying clues to hopes and heartbreaks, daydreams and every day issues.
A forlorn, segmented tray cupping Salisbury steak and sides of mashed potatoes and string beans, for example, spins endlessly inside a shiny microwave that’s stacked with a trio of TV dinners able to be “nuked” in “Nuclear Family.” Different meals gadgets embrace a light-weight beer, fat-free cookies, and a two-liter bottle of Weight loss program Coke. A Buns of Metal VHS field set communes with a ThighMaster field promising a solution to “squeeze… squeeze your way to a shapely figure.” An unassuming blue-and-white field bears a Viagra label, and a Head & Shoulders bottle hawks a dandruff treatment. A rapturous romance novel, titled Prisoner of My Want, splayed open on an ironing board beside a Black and Decker Gentle ‘n Straightforward iron affords a hot-and-heavy escape from the mundane.
Set up view of Stephanie H. Shih: Home Bliss at Alexander Berggruen
The artist finishes each bit with the attentive element of handwritten typography. The ensuing pop sculpture pairings and tableaux meld an uncanny trompe l’oeil presence with clear proof of Shih’s hand, rendering the preliminary factory-made kinds imperfect and distinctly emotive, like time capsules of the center.
Regardless of the gallery’s hush, long-forgotten soundbites lodged deep in my reminiscence bubble up unbidden as I stroll amongst Shih’s sculptures. In entrance of the jewel case for Alanis Morrisette’s album Jagged Little Capsule (1995), which is paired with an open hardpack of Camels, lyrics from monitor quantity 4 spring to thoughts: “…I’ve got one hand in my pocket and the other one is flickin’ a cigarette.” A Filet-o-Fish sandwich sculpture summons a snippet of a grating chant from a McDonald’s industrial (I’ll spare you that earworm). No matter your private associations or the degrees of ’90s nostalgia you harbor for the merchandise Shih placed on pedestals on this present, there’s pleasure in seeing commonplace home objects rescued from the rubbish bin of mass-produced reminiscence and reimagined as artwork.
An alchemical mutation occurs when on a regular basis objects are reinterpreted with such painstaking ranges of craft, as seen in works by kindred sculptors, like Liza Lou and Claes Oldenburg (each of whom have additionally depicted dustpans, meals, and on a regular basis objects). Shih’s hand, too, transforms these objects, infusing them with that means and coronary heart. These sculptures each protect a second in time and switch would-be cultural flotsam into one thing pleasant but wrenching — and totally human.
Stephanie H. Shih, “SnackWell’s Devil’s Food” (2024), ceramic
Stephanie H. Shih, “Filet-of-Fish” (2023)
Stephanie H. Shih, “Dissolution” (2024), ceramic, resin
Stephanie H. Shih, “Thighmaster” (2024), ceramic
Stephanie H. Shih: Home Bliss continues at Alexander Berggruen (1018 Madison Avenue, third Flooring, Higher East Aspect, Manhattan) by February 26. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.