Coming in 2017 visit plasticbagstore.org for more info
The Plastic Bag Store sells plastic bags. There are cartons of bags, boxes of bags, and of course bags of bags. It’s a little overwhelming.
From the street, it looks like any other store in New York. There’s a tacky vinyl awning, and windows full of products and colorful signage.
Step inside. At the counter there’s a cashier. He says you can look around. It turns out everything in the shelves is actually just plastic bags. The candy rack has “bag bars, " The magazine rack is just magazines about bags.
This is the world created by the artist Robin Frohardt. It’s an installation open during business hours for anyone who wants to drop by and look around. At night, the store comes alive with a team of puppeteers and actors.
Buy a ticket and the cashier will point you towards the aisles that twist and turn into a maze . Navigate past intricate cardboard sets growing from the cereal aisle, climb inside the freezer case into a frozen world. Open a secret door and you’ll be transported to a future history museum where your trash is excavated and analyzed.
Frohardt’s Plastic Bag Store is a narrative installation, a puppet show, a joke gone too far. It’s also a story about the crap we use to hold all our crap. About the absurdity of waste created for the sake of simple convenience, and the permanence of the disposable.
