lindsay smith gustave

The Animal, Vegetable, Mineral series memorializes the mundane, incorporating key elements of life–animal, vegetable, and mineral–into a single composed image. The body of work adds nuance to an amorphous conversation regarding individual agency in the conscious and subconscious curation of the world around us, most specifically the home. Although these subject-objects are stricken from context and pared down to their essential relationships within space, they offer symbols of a collective domestic experience. Their simplified representation draws attention to a mental and emotional void between ourselves and those objects. By examining connections–or lack thereof–with these objects, consumerist traditions of still life and portraiture are injected with an air of longing and perhaps sadness. Animal, Vegetable, Mineral trains its focus on the physicality of objecthood within our daily space and the beautiful and decadent moments available if we just take the time to see them.