AN ABSURD ARTIST'S BOOK
Shopping carts: they stand in front of supermarkets day in and day out without attracting any attention. But when they are removed from their usual surroundings, they develop a strange power of attraction. In Berlin, shopping carts are frequently, quite often in nocturnal “actions,” repositioned, knocked over, hung up, or loaded with curious things. Over two years, the photographer Luca Ellena “portrayed” numerous shopping carts in such unusual surroundings. This has resulted in an absurd artist’s book filled with unexpected stories that we can only imagine.

When, in 1934, Sylvan Goldman took over the Humpty Dumpty super markets in Oklahoma City during the chain’s economic decline, he could not have known that in just two years he would have the greatest idea of his life. Though Goldman immediately set the chain on a success course, his major legacy was the invention of the shopping cart, a simple iron structure mounted on four wheels, soon used worldwide, to be pushed through the aisles between supermarket shelves by millions of shoppers.

Shopping carts: they stand neatly in a row in front of supermarkets, always prepared to be of service to transport goods for us. Yet sometimes these practical aids to our consumption are yanked from their trusty environment and take on a new symbiotic relationship to unusual places: knocked over, upside down, hung on fences and propped against bushes, filled with curious things and alienated. it is not at all rare to encounter them as a duo-pack, deep in a couple-like dialogue and often blended into their surroundings.

For over three years the photographer Luca Ellena (*1997) has been on the trail of such displaced shopping carts and their impact on Berlin’s cityscape, and has recorded these sculptural objects in all their bizarre poses. Now his "portraits" are published as an artist book.

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