Byron Kim, Deposit, 2/19-3/14/98, installation detail

Deposit was a participant-activated project conceived and carried out during Byron Kim's residency at Gallery 400. For this project, the public was asked to bring in a personal belonging to symbolically cast away over the top of the gallery wall. The objects then fell into a narrow space visible only from the street-side plate glass windows, creating a kind of public monument to the collective memory of the participants. Contributors were also asked to describe and record the significance of the objects they deposited. These narratives were broadcast both inside and outside the gallery, weaving another layer of meaning and memory throughout the site.

Throughout the course of the exhibition, objects and narratives accumulated free form, causing the installation to morph and grow over time. In her review, Olga Zdanovics described the deposited items as "pop art stand-ins...a commentary on art's relationship to lived reality." Full of playful inversions and blurred boundaries, Deposit works to complicate the relationship of public and private, galleries and communities, and creators and receivers of art.