Logistic Figures: Lisa Trogen Devgun

The organization of global distribution boils down to the never-ending effort of moving things from one place to the next. It is exceedingly important to pay attention to all forms of circulation, and remember that even seemingly frictionless systems of distribution still have high costs of attrition.

Lisa Trogen Devgun has undertaken a deep investigation into the utilitarian beauty of form materialized in modern packaging and shipping crates. Put into contrast with what idealists describe as the immateriality of digital distribution, her engagement with the proverbial materiality of shipping crates puts the toxic beauty of globalization into the limelight of the white cube.

Until we ship crates for their own sake, as objects of beauty, what Devgun does is the closest we will get to experience the overlooked aesthetics of those things that carries all other things.

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The elaborate, almost architectural pieces of Devgun examines the properties of packaging on different scales. The delimited space created by any room is alluded to by unfolded crates and sheer utilitarian insulation boards. Empty boxes come to stand in for us, take us in as equals, and smooth over the failures of socialized perception.

In the exhibition at Belenius/Nordenhake we are met by lightweight transformer-like shipping crates interlocked in barriers; deconstructed boxes signaling an uncanny unraveling of space. What's more, we are also invited and swallowed whole in slick metallic space.

When enveloped in low thermal conductivity-where circulation comes to a stop-one starts thinking soothing things. The inside of an aluminum-coated room clears a racing mind.

This, however, is no exercise in relationality, there are no tensions between spectator and Devgun's objects of art-In a world of objects, packaging is all.

/Mats Carlsson