Office Supply Cubicle

Matt Callinan’s Office Supply Cubicle takes a familiar space — an office cubicle — and recontextualizes it as a matrix of consumables that responds to the contemporary state of material dependency.  Constructed from — and patterned with — ready-made, mass-produced products, Office Supply Cubicle points to the dominant dynamics of modern consumption and accumulation.

Amidst mass production and homogenized standards, objects and people lose their distinguishing features, while ubiquitous big-box retailers encourage insatiable consumer demand. Callinan’s cubicle highlights the fetishization consumables, where each small product, seemingly innocent, becomes a brick in a modern tower of babel.

The cubicle — its walls assembled with colored notebooks, binders, and other office supplies — is a space both intimate in size and execution. To some extent, it evokes a shrine, engaging the viewer in a dialogue about what truly attracts us — and its value — in our contemporary age. Disconcertingly, Office Supply Cubicle suggests that it may be consumption itself.