Ideal-X
Painting for the doors at Open Source Gallery, made for the exhibition We Know Not Exactly Where or How, curated by Elizabeth Spavento.
The work is named for the first container ship, our contemporary method for moving goods around the world, greatly reducing costs of everyday items for wealthy countries and radically changing the nature of labor, ethics and standards of living worldwide.
Open Source Gallery in Park Slope, Brooklyn is near the Gowanus Canal - a historic site of trade of goods between New York City and the Caribbean. Today the Gowanus is a superfund site with community gardens, clean-water activists and a wealth of development that comes with former industrial sites in NYC. This area of Brooklyn is also still an active site of trade with the Caribbean – including rum and chocolate importers active for decades – as well as modern, global trade – IKEA, Loews, Pathmark – expanded versions of these historical trade routes.
The design for the doors developed from these historical sources, an iconographic reference to mark the history of the site.