Alice in Wonderland – Debra Franses-Bean
Throwback Online Exhibition 2013

My sculptures are kitsch resin handbags – with dollar bills, My Little Ponies, pocket watches, or rusted keys encased within them presenting the viewer with a parody of commercial designer desirables through hyper-real emulation.

My work takes its cue from the kitschy elements of popular culture, referencing both pop art and post modernism’s endeavours to embody these ideals. The relentless repetition of this as a form and concept is replete with notions of the mass manufactured products that contribute to society’s increasingly cluttered landscape of ‘stuff’.

I explore ideas centered on consumption and mass production and acknowledge the complex relationship that we have with material objects as consumable goods – our penchant to consume is denigrated by the ensuing guilt and anxiety that tends to follow. These handbags are commodities in and of themselves.

In as much as these works are a nod to pop art, they also allude to the digital age, as the very process by which the contents of these resin handbags are acquired is through online shopping and social networking.

A CONVERSATION WITH DEBRA FRANSES-BEAN

By Jenni Higginbotham

Debra Franses-Bean’s “Art Bags” are frozen moments of consumption, of eating your cake and having it, too.  A series of identical, crystal-clear handbags contain a plethora of desirable objects—often the kind whose appeal is short-lived. Take Yum for example: an Art Bag full of colorful Gummy Bears. The Gummy Bears are suspended in the clear resin, preserved forever in the belly of the handbag. They are consumed, but not digested. Mummified in their chic resin coffin, they are satisfying in a way that the actual experience of eating a handful of gummy bears cannot be. Other Art Bags contain wads of cash, slick handguns, designer lipstick tubes—and all manner of objects denoting a level of comfort, prestige, and style. In my conversation with Bean, she sheds some light upon her artistic process, her often-humorous relationships with collectors, and some of the autobiographical content of her work. In addition, she discusses her position as an artist working in both the commercial and fine art realms.

The rest of this interview can be read on our UnBlog page.