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An Inverted Basket

(157)
$ 1,500.00
Details

Dimensions: 21″ x 13″ x 3″
Medium: wood, brass, steel, ash, ink, chiffon
Type: Unique

Based on a valet key box and the gigantic set of keys the artist carries around for various jobs, home, and transportation, An Inverted Basket (2024) depicts a container whose contents can define a person. Transient, everyday objects; keys determine where one can go, can be, and can do, ultimately defining a great deal about a person. They are inextricably linked to work and home, two places most people spend most of their lives as adults. The altar-like presentation of the keys embed a spirituality to the storing, removal, and use of everyday objects, while the key’s engravings add a layer of imagination that opens up worlds, where discreet places, experiences, and ideas are introduced. The drawings – of barriers, fences, entrances, flowers blooming, doors in the middle of nowhere, footprints left in soil, a spiral that could be the cosmos or rings of a tree, a torn throw net – are scattered behind a frail security measure. When entered, two glass marbles, resembling eyes, meet the viewer’s gaze. At first glance, What You Bind on Earth (2024) can present itself as the mere opposite of An Inverted Basket, due to its deceiving looks. Made mostly of high density foam, the work, which sits somewhere between a hide-a-key, a cartoonish prop, and a sword in the stone, is light in weight and vulnerable to alterations. The bankers box, a temporary storage option often reserved for the most mundane paperworks, becomes the carrier of an entire career and professional identity when a person resigns or is let go from their workplace. It represents a collection, a distillation, perhaps a reduction, of a person’s identity within late capitalism. Cleary fantasizes a petrified bankers box that is to be found centuries from now and the speculations around the fossil as an object of art.

About the artist

Max Cleary is an artist based in Los Angeles and Honolulu working across photography, sculpture, and painting. His practice hovers between factual and imaginary, between utilitarian and absurd, between alive and dead. Following interests in metaphysics, craft, mythology, and folk practices, his works function simultaneously as narrative devices, historical documents, and pseudo-scientific visual aids.

Shipping

This work is on view at GOBI as part of the Function–Fiction exhibition. Work will ship out or be ready for pick-up at GOBI in September after the exhibition closes. Shipping rates are calculated separately via email. For inquiries regarding shipping, please email hello@gobi.la