The journey of a fossil* purchased on eBay is explored in the exhibition Sending by Fritz Hendrik IV. In the series Stones in Baskets, Fritz depicts fossils on transport vessels such as carts, ships, and airplanes. The woven baskets of the transport vehicles symbolize the World Wide Web – the digital “basket” where we place our online purchases. This work offers a symbolic portrayal of how online shopping has transformed our experience of commerce and the movement of goods. Fossils, once living creatures, have fossilized into stone, been unearthed, and now travel across borders to our doorstep, with no direct connection between buyer and origin. We purchase items from all corners of the world with a few clicks, dissolving geographical boundaries. What was once local, with a specific cultural or natural origin, is now accessible to all through an ever-active global online marketplace.
There is something odd about ordering items online. We choose the item, place it in the shopping cart, and press the purchase button – at that moment, it becomes more than a product; it becomes an idea. We imagine how we’ll feel when we receive it, how it might alter our daily lives. This waiting creates a tension between expectation and reality. The anticipation often becomes even stronger than the feeling we get when the item finally arrives. In the series Sending, the outlines of objects emerge in the gray corners of rooms, and the titles of the works are tracking numbers, like those we see when ordering items online. These are symbols of the idea of an item that has yet to reach its recipient, something supernatural – in transit, between worlds and states of being.
*Brittle star, 145–149 million years old.
