The Dream Shop is open
Lies Maculan has built the shop of our dreams, literally. Her Chelsea-based Dream Shop puts over 100 of our most common dreams on shelves in a 3,000 sq. ft retail-like space, as if they were available to purchase. There’s a trompe l’oeil at work however – the shelves and everything on them are 2D, Maculan’s specialty being photo-installations. At first glance, however, they’re convincingly real. The pile of bricks looks poised to topple over and the man with the briefcase and mop bucket looks as if he could walk right out of the walls – if that unfortunately hokey grin glued to his face didn’t give the illusion away.
But of course the illusion exists only to be discovered, and as your peruse the shop the shelves become less real and more like props, like the movable cardboard cut-out scenery from those early Disneyland rides. Considered as a complete exhibition the execution is, I think, successful. The space opens up before you like a great big cabinet of wonder. But the way the individual items work as symbols – the bricks are for building your dream house, the man is the dream husband, he works and cleans – is where the concept falls flat, perhaps because Maculan seems to only offer up the objects themselves without much interpretation from her end as the artist. But like dreams what matters here is that they feel good and they’re nice to look at, and The Dream Shop is at least that: a welcome reprieve from our real, waking life on the other side of its doors.
The Dream Shop, 30 West 21st St. open until March 30, Tuesday – Sunday, 3-11pm
