The Lives of Objects is a website in which real spaces are rendered virtually with fictitious exhibitions. Each exhibition features a video and/or link directing the viewer to the exhibition’s location in Google’s 3D warehouse. The Lives of Objects is based on the idea that, while artworks are often material objects, the lives of artworks — their meaning, connotation, and narrative — exist outside of their materiality. Here, Michelle Grabner’s alternative space The Suburban, which includes The Suburban 1 and 2, has been virtually modeled. The model includes an exhibition with works by artists that have previously shown at The Suburban. Most works are represented through images appropriated from The Suburban’s website.
—Mieke Marple
Rendered in The Lives of Objects, The Suburban escapes its already slight physical limitations. It loses its aura and the aura of the art work that it supports. And the suburban context that frames its geographic location widens into a heterogenous space. When The Suburban is rebuilt and its doppelganger takes up residence at another site, The Suburban is grounded in the physical limitations of gravity, material, and place. I like to consider Boris Groys comment that “The difference between original and copy is obliterated in the case of digitalization only by the fact that the original data are invisible: They exist in the invisible space behind the image, inside the computer.” —Michelle Grabner

Virtual model of The Suburban 1.
Featured on The Lives of Objects

Installation view inside The Suburban 1.
Work by Wade Guyton and Henrik Plenge Jakobsen

Installation view inside The Suburban 1.
Work by Wade Guyton and Luc Tuymans

Installation view inside The Suburban 1.
Work by Kirsten Stoltmann

Installation view inside The Suburban 2.
Work by Jan Van der Ploeg,
Sharon Engelstein, Konsortium,
and Rochelle Feinstein

Installation view inside The Suburban 2.
Work by Konsortium, Michael Krebber, and Bernard Frize

Installation view inside The Suburban 2.
Work by Konsortium, Jan Van der Ploeg,
and Rochelle Feinstein
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