Michael Dinges: Artifacts From the Recent Present August 9, 2011

At the center of this exhibition is a full-sized "lifeboat" fabricated by the artist out of plastic siding and engraved on its exterior with images and text exploring the intertwined stories of labor, consumerism and the environment. Michael Dinges employs the maritime practice of scrimshaw -- originally the engraving of whale bones or teeth -- which originated on whaling ships in the mid-1700s. Also on display will be several pieces from the "Dead Laptop" series, in which Dinges applies scrimshaw to defunct laptop computers, resulting in hand-decorated objects of mass-produced origin that comment on our use of, and dependency on, technology to mediate our experience and understanding of the world around us.