Adrian Duchateau

The Value of Things by Adrian Duchateau

Every value designation gets made from a functionality point of view or from the necessity we have for it. These evaluations are either economical or natural; economical when a resource is scarce or unique and natural when a resource is indispensable for survival. This understanding makes us treasure things like gold or water. There is also a third aspect, a subjective point of view under which objects receive their value. Subjectivity can make us treasure anything, from a piece of paper inscribed with the words of our first love to a trophy that commemorates an outstanding achievement. Both objects are by themselves useless, but they hold an understandable value for their possessor. The foundation of human consumption is built around these three aspects on which we value things, first, we nourish ourselves, and when our survival is ensured, then we make diverse transactions so we can collect or acquire the things that each of us values as individuals. My work explores the notion of value around objects that are commonly seen as valueless. In the first approach, I am collecting useless or meaningless things to reconfigure their value by forcing them to withstand a pristine aesthetic canvas capable of turning them into a piece of art. These images seek to build a poetic or fantastic narrative around the objects that conveys different feelings and/or stories for the spectator, thus increasing the value of such meaningless objects. An expansion of this series came when I applied the same premise to the meaningless trash we produce on daily basis. These disposable objects receive no further consideration besides their instant use, even though their mass production requires a huge number of valuable resources and a massive drawback: the resulting garbage and pollution the Earth is suffering. Every man-created object should be considered on these two terms; the resources spent on its production and the pollution it leaves behind. Those two cost measurements unveil the real value of things. Therefore, in this second approach, I collected discarded trash to place it in an aesthetic environment that shapes their appreciative value; in the real world they have a simple and fugacious function, but inside the boundaries of a white canvas, one can stare and wonder about the meaning of the image, thus the object’s reason for being. My work seeks to be an evaluation of what can be appreciated as valuable. If meaningless objects or discarded trash can become an aesthetic experience, then there can be a shift in our perspective about what we cherish. This possibility extends to our capability for cultural change that can modify the established consumption order that has our world on the brink of irreversible damage.