David Shapiro: Nickel Bags

The museum’s West Gallery will feature Nickel Bags, an installation by New York- based artist David Shapiro. Nickel Bags is an ongoing project centered on a simple action—everyday, for the last ten years, Shapiro has picked up three things off the street. Each plucked piece is sealed in a tiny plastic bag and pinned to the wall forming a grid of thousands of disjointed scraps. A plastic toy, a lollipop wrapper, a lipstick smeared cigarette butt, teeth marks on a piece of gum—Shapiro claims them all. Together they form a colorful and expansive mosaic of discarded consumption. Shapiro sees these vestiges of stranger’s lives as “points of departure for reconstructing narratives and speculating on motives,” where, like a jigsaw puzzle in reverse, “the picture is fit to the pieces”.

Shapiro’s recent solo exhibitions include 100,000 Holes in 2002 and Control Freak in 1999, both at LiebmanMagnan, New York. In addition to numerous group shows, in 2000 he exhibited Nickel Bags, in a solo show at Lavanderia Fundacion in Barcelona. A University at Albany graduate with a B.A. in English, Shapiro is also the director, writer, and producer of the award-winning documentary film, Keep the River on Your Right: A Modern Cannibal Tale.