Delivered Dreams: It Is What It Is

There’s a thrill in anticipation. Accustomed to the immediacy of online orders, we’ve come to fetishize the branded parcel and the torn package, which is discarded a moment later. When its function ends, its form remains, regardless of the content’s promise or the buyer’s expectations. Among unboxing spectacles and ephemeral delights, there’s a radical elegance in resisting the seductive unsealing.

Art, in its own language, has the power to reconsider that moment. It can suspend the reveal, choosing instead to dwell in the not yet known. It can resist clarity; it can pose an invitation to linger in what is not yet said. Art can play with the illusory by monumentalizing the parcel itself. When the package is reframed, the need to glorify the product ceases. What is considered mundane, utilitarian, fragile, or disposable becomes oddly charming.

 

I wonder what happens when the content is suspended, hidden, or reversed. The recipient might explore what is visible or imagine what isn’t. The idea of the sealed parcel resisting transparency has been a recurring interest among artists across generations, intentions, and techniques. By reconfiguring its exterior, casting its interior, or solidifying its surface, the image is accentuated, the shape preserved, and the object’s transience arrested.

 

That association becomes a site of speculation, and speculation becomes a kind of value in itself. By interpreting the mundane, a form of resistance is posed against the culture of performative revelation. Against the insistence that everything must be seen, known, consumed.

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Images: Peter Sandbichler, Alte Schachtel, 2020; Peter Sandbichler, Alte Schachtel, 2010; Rachel Whiteread, Prop, 2005; Peter Sandbichler, Exhibition View at Galerie Sechzig; Illya Goldman Gubin, Karton Stuhl 1B, 2021.