Larry Mantello

You are looking at the interior of my apartment. The room is a collection of thousands of objects celebrating American consumer culture and is intended to be viewed as a sculpture. The work, entitled Box Rap, developed within my home out of a necessity to alleviate the costs of separate studio expenses. The overall dimensions of the work were determined by the space between the floor, walls, and ceiling. When it was shown at Henry Urbach Architecture in New York, it was presented in a 24-foot-by-12-foot wooden box through which viewers were invited to walk. In addition, the work included an array of lighting effects, along with moving and musical elements. It is my hope that Box Rap initiates a conversation about imprisonment in a culturally constructed world, through images, ideas, identity, and definition. Not unlike my work, this photograph is a formal creation of space—artificial and invented.