Review of consumed by Melissa Dean at the Boyden Gallery

On January 24Th I attended an event at the Boyden Gallery. Melissa Dean was showing her installation, consumed, a work dealing with consumerism. Dean takes many of the elements used in her works from the Target and Ikea catalogs and cuts or stamps them out of paper.As a man who hates to shop, married to a woman who loves to shop, this body of works has some meaning to me. There are only two places that I would enjoy shopping at, a large music store where I can try out some of the guitars and the Harley Davidson dealer. I never have the time to go to these places, my wife on the other hand shops all weekend every weekend,if it gives you pleasure go for it although I don't understand how, it is like torture to me.
I thought Dean's work "Quantifying goodwill and other intangible assets" was interesting. I looked like a graph of some sort of data this work occupied an entire wall of the gallery. The "data points" were composed of stamped out pictures of Black and Decker blenders. Dean olso used giant dolies as a base of some of her works.
I thought that dean's work on the adjoining wall, a list of the twelve catagories listed on the Target website in giant brail symbols was very original. This work is composed of many smaller cutouts of various consumer items but the detail gets lost in the size of the work. I agree with Dean that there is too much consumerism and that we don't need so much junk in our lives but I think I am a part of a small minority with that viewpoint. I know a lot of people who are shopaholics and they gain a great amount of "utility",( economics speak), from their buying.