Name/Title
Bluebagware (Chicago)Entry/Object ID
2022.12Description
Set of blue kitchen utensils, pots, and pans that hang from a shelf.Artwork Details
Medium
Reformed Chicago recycling bagsContext
Since the 1980s, Dan Peterman’s work has blurred the boundary between socially-engaged and environmental art. Often working with materials that have become increasingly significant in an era of climate change and ecological devastation, Peterman’s sculptures and installations draw attention to what the contemporary theorist Timothy Morton calls “hyperobjects”—recalcitrant materials and entities so vast in scale that their occupancy in space and time shatters our habitual ways of thinking.
Peterman’s work Bluebagware (Chicago) is a good example of this in its investigation into the blue recycling bags implemented by the City of Chicago in 1995. Intended to encourage recycling, the program not only required residents to purchase their own blue recycling bags—an obvious cost barrier for encouraging widescale participation—but it was later revealed that only about 9% of the garbage collected was recycled as high-rise and higher-density buildings were not purchasing the bags. Peterman recycled the notorious recycling bags, shaping them into sturdy cups, plates, and utensils. The bright blue, almost ceramic-like sculptures ultimately reveal a tension at the heart of modern life: the domestic sphere requires individual households to consume more and more commodities all the while seeking to mitigate the effects of overconsumption. In Peterman’s sculpture, the production of waste in eating and cooking is confronted with its repressed material support, namely, the packaging and containers that ought to be recycled and reused, but which ultimately become stubborn detritus.
In addition, this idea of the “hyperobject” is perhaps well illustrated by Peterman’s 1994 installation Sulfur Cycle at the MCA, which was reiterated in 2020–21. For this project, Peterman displayed six one-ton stacks of synthetic gypsum drywall in one of the museum’s galleries just before the MCA was to move to a newly constructed building down the street. It was Peterman’s intention that the humble drywall on view be used in the construction of the fourth floor of the new building. Peterman’s gesture, however, added another layer of meaning to similar works of institutional critique that had taken place at the MCA such as Michael Asher’s 1979 removal of part of the building’s façade. Peterman did not just draw attention to the structures and infrastructures that support the artworld while often remaining imperceptible to museum visitors, he also was highlighting that the drywall was in fact a synthetic product containing a ton of sulfur derived from coal and thus entangled in larger ecological and environmental processes.Acquisition
Accession
2022.12Source or Donor
Nancy Mollers, Robert MollersAcquisition Method
GiftCredit Line
Gift of Nancy and Robert MollersInterpretative Labels
Label
Dan Peterman (b. 1960)
Bluebagware (Chicago), 1996
Reformed Chicago recycling bags
Collection of DePaul Art Museum, gift of Nancy and Robert Mollers
2022.12
In 1995 the City of Chicago piloted its first major recycling program, which required residents to purchase blue plastic bags into which they were to place their recyclables. A precursor to the blue bins used today, the visibility of the bright blue plastic bags was, in principle, meant to help sanitation workers sort recycling from trash. However, the plan backfired and resulted in abysmal recycling rates. It is worth noting that by 1992 Chicago was recycling only 13 to 19 percent of its commercial garbage and virtually nothing from residences. Dan Peterman’s Bluebagware (Chicago) refashions the notorious blue bags into ordinary kitchen objects. Peterman’s almost ceramic-like sculptures ultimately reveal a tension at the heart of contemporary life: the capitalist domestic sphere requires individual households to consume more and more commodities, all the while seeking to mitigate the effects of overconsumption with ineffective recycling initiatives.