It appears that the anonymous installation artist whose work appeared in Salt Lake City's Fairmont Park, as documented here by softliquidjoy, has struck San Francisco. Though it is possible that another artist is responsible for this new discovery, the similarities between the two pieces is striking enough to see the same anonymous artist's hand at work in both.

The (apparent) assemblage you are about to see documented appeared on Carl St., just west of Cole St., in San Francisco's Cole Valley. It rested facing the front wall of a residence, abutting the stairway to the entrance to said residence.

Anonymous
Untitled Installation 2
2008
mixed media
4 x 2 x 4 ft.
Cole Valley, San Francisco

Here, a generic shopping cart serves as a framing device for the piece as a whole. The cart at once evokes themes of consumerism, decadence, velocity and displacement. The handle of the cart, presented to the viewer, features a subtle embossed "Thank You", engaging its audience immediately with inviting warmth. At the same time, the dark, monochromatic color scheme and harsh geometric grids of the cart emanate a sense of foreboding.



This frontal view, looking inside the cart, is designed to leave the viewer feeling slightly out-of-place due to the orientation of the two most visually arresting objects, the bottom half of the front page of a local newspaper and a recently-emptied styrofoam take-out container. The vertical bars - do they prevent the viewer's access to the truth within, or prevent the escape of a dangerous presence from within? The position of the take-out container on top of the newspaper suggests the dominance of animal impulses over intellectual rigor. The contents of the container have recently been devoured, causing a fleeting sense of fulfillment coupled with a reminder of mortality. Perhaps the cause of this chaos is the ripe fruit on the right, out of which only two bites have been taken, putting us in mind of Adam and Eve's Tree of Knowledge. The newspaper, embodying knowledge itself, appears to be spilling out of the fruit.




With this view from above, we get a better perspective of the contents of the basket. Placed all about the scene are natural elements (flowers, fruit) mingling with multi-colored man-made cylinders - the caps of food and/or beverage containers. Each of these smaller objects is a discarded, decaying part of a whole. The flowers rest between the take-out container and the newspaper, acting as envoys from one party to the other - pink flowers carrying a message of admiration and appreciation, white flowers signifying honor, reverence, and innocence. The plastic caps serve as reminders of the unquenchable thirst that is human desire.



This last detail gives us a closer look at the newspaper. The major image therein is of the bottom half of the face of a dark-skinned male. A leaf covers the figure's mouth, just as fig leaves covered Adam and Eve's loins. Is the artist conjuring the "Speak no evil" adage, portraying the advance of human knowledge as antithetical to a Thoreauian idea of "Nature", or decrying the suppression of the voices of non-white peoples? Is it possible that he or she is commenting on America's current political atmosphere? In a piece as charged with meaning as this one, many interpretations are possible.