Anders Bergstrom | Need A Bag?

December 9, 2021 – January 22, 2022

In this series of new works, Bergstrom’s artistic focus is the brown paper bag— a common, seemingly inconsequential item present in our everyday life. Yet, Bergstrom takes this item and transforms it, masking a piece about the production process under the veil of a finished product. Bergstrom’s paper bags pay tribute to the individual labor behind the gears of mass production. However, his paper bags look as they usually do (crisp, flattened, or greasy); they are also constructed, through skilled print methods, in a way that speaks to the process of manual reproduction in the mass production sphere.

By removing the bags from their everyday reality and invoking imagery of ideas like utilitarian design objects, street detritus, garbage, and environmental concerns, Bergstrom comments on consumer culture, mass production, and the role of the laborer. The meticulous engineering of Bergstrom’s bags puts the artist into the shoes of the laborer. 

View the online Need A Bag? exhibition here.

Anders Bergstrom (1971) was born in Tucson, Arizona and has a Bachelor of Arts, Sociology and Fine Arts from the University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Bergstrom’s work is in the collections of The New York Public Library, University of New Hampshire, Beinecke Library at Yale University, Smith College Museum of Art, MA, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.