carriers 01 + 02, 2023/2025 (gallery view)
oil on Belgian linen/canvasboard
each 40 x 50 cm (39,4 x 59 inches)
carriers 01, Papiertüten, 2023
oil on canvasboard
30 x 40 cm (11,8 x 15,8 inches)
carriers 02, plastic bag, 2025
oil on Belgian linen
30 x 40 cm (11,8 x 15,8 inches)
carriers 02, plastic bag, 2023 (detail)
oil on Belgian linen
30 x 40 cm (11,8 x 15,8 inches)
Two vessels, two materials, two states of being: carriers 01–02 isolates a pair of utilitarian forms:
a paper bag, upright and unfilled;
a plastic bag, suspended and adrift.
Both are carriers in the literal sense, emptied of contents, severed from use. They appear not as still lifes but as typologies: socially coded, materially distinct, compositionally restrained.
The contrast is structural. One rests, the other hovers. One asserts mass, the other offers outline. The paper bag speaks of surface and fold, the plastic of volume and blur. They resist metaphor but not association. They suggest time, circulation, disappearance.
As a diptych or series in formation, Carriers 01-02 belong to a silent archive of transitional forms: things once touched, now stilled. It is not the symbolic weight of the bag that matters, but the fact that it remains. Carriers do not act as narrative agents, but residues: signs of transit, emptied and held.
Technical note:
The plastic bag is painted on a darc background in zinc white (zinc oxide)(*1), a pigment selected for its transparency and chemical index. Although benign in human application, zinc oxide is classified as ecotoxic to aquatic life; a material echo of the work’s thematic register.
Sources:
1 zinc white.
In: Wikipedia – The Free Encyclopedia,
URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/zinc_white