Nationally-recognized artist, Jean Shin sees value and beauty in the things we discard on a daily basis. Much like those freaks people on the Hoarders TV show, she’s always collecting scavenged and obsolete materials such as; empty pill bottles, broken umbrellas, unlucky lottery tickets, sucked-dry wine bottles, worn-out clothing and disposable wooden chopsticks. However, unlike most pack rats, Shin transforms her trash into a series of way-cool art exhibits and installations.

Catch Shin’s latest trash-tastic masterpiece, entitled Unlocking at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. Here, Shin’s turned her attention to something we all use on a daily basis, but never really think about: Keys. Discover the uncanny visual relationship between the horizontal profile of house, car, office, janitor, safe, and what-ever-else-kind-of- keys you can think of and the Arizona landscape, as well as five of Shin’s a-freaking-mazing artworks after the jump!

Not only do keys themselves have a deeper social meaning of trust and intimacy when we look at the range of people that we dare choose to share our keys with, but Shin and Ripel’s collaborative artworks always have a underlying message. For previous exhibits, the artists have reached out to the community for materials. For Unlocking at SMoCA, Valley residents donated old keys to be used in the artwork. The artwork maps out the vast social (personal and professional) network that our community has based on the keys we share.

The keys no longer have any use and have no additional meaning, but they do hint at the places that we once lived or worked in. The end result of the mapping and collecting of the keys from the community will build on the similarities of the horizontal profile of them and the Arizona landscape. The artwork consists of visual projection and sculptures and will offer multiple perspectives on the ways in which the people of the Valley are connected to one another while revealing layers of meaning embedded in the social community and the physical environment that we share.

To see the new exhibit, check it for yourself all the way up until January 2, inside Gallery 4 at SMoCA. Join artist Jean Shin on Wednesday, November 17, at 7 pm, when she discusses the installation and how her artistic practice was combined with Ripel’s architectural influence on Stage 2 at SMoCA.

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