Start Up (Gallery 151)

StartUp is a conceptual mobile and technology installation by Evan Yee. In StartUp, the artist creates and displays physical interpretations of phone applications as well as re-appropriated tech items, creating an experiential commentary on the digital generation. In the artist’s audio statement, Siri dictates the phrase “iThink, if Utopia holds convenience, then the future holds Utopia.” Startup encourages the viewer to evaluate obsessions with contemporary design, convenience and the future.

With the explosion of app creation over the past six years, virtual environments have eclipsed “mechanical” utilitarian objects. Apps and the platforms and the technology that hosts them are at the forefront of commercialism, function and design. They blur the boundaries between the physical and digital worlds. Yeehas created objects that are whimsical in their nature and scale, yet dystopic in their implication.

Evan Yee’s StartUp is designed with the contemporary feel of Apple’s retail environment, displaying physical iterations of apps as art objects. Presented with a dark underlying humor reminiscent of Kurt Vonnegut and Stanley Kubrick, here we are presented with the paradox of applications that we perceive to have functionality but may not perform any function at all.