Contraposto Home Decor

Selected screen shots from Contraposto’s last website (contrapostoliving.com), online artists’ book, 2015

Introduction

In 1998 I founded Contraposto Home Décor, an artwork that took the form of a legitimate e-business that sold home accents. Its equivocal nature as both an artwork and a business caught unassuming visitors off-guard with its playful critique of Western traditions relative to the construction of the home. As the title suggests, contrapposto (I dropped a “p” in the business name because it played better with focus groups) is a posture of leisure that appropriately infers a kind of passive relaxation bound up in Victorian notions of the home as haven. But it also suggests a more subversive notion in that although it refers to a standing posture, it is one of passivity; if one is standing counterpoised (in a contrapposto posture) one is not prepared for action.

On Contraposto's Website (December 1998 - December 2015)

The Contraposto Home Décor Co. website is product-driven; the company reduces masterpieces of world culture to the status of the consumable home accent—candles, soaps, garden sculpture, etc. Contraposto manufactures all of its goods using a variety of low-tech mass production techniques. The website has gone through many redesigns since it first launched in 1998. Each iteration attempted to reflect the Internet’s social and aesthetic impact on digital and physical culture.