An extension of his ongoing project The Perfect Nothing Catalog, Frank Traynor has produced this body of work to isolate “special moments” such as holiday celebrations and fleeting, seasonal excitement and carry them into more accessible circumstances. Can Opener of Myself is a reverse engineering of the extraordinary, imagining a world in which the most mundane of activities can be made merry through the use of humorously ritualistic objects. In Traynor’s world, opening a can may be as exciting and unique an experience as opening a Christmas present. Similarly to the ways in which lighting a candle sets a special tone in a room, Traynor’s work gives us the gift of a moment through a wink and a flicker. As he often says to his patrons, “I hope these things make you smile a little bit for a very long time.”

Born in Miami, Florida in 1985, Frank Traynor is an artist and designer whose itinerant practice is currently based in Los Angeles. In 2012, Traynor gained notoriety for The Perfect Nothing Catalog, a project he began with a shack he found in upstate New York and transported to Brooklyn. Creating a space that existed between commercial and conceptual definitions, Traynor used The Perfect Nothing Catalog as an opportunity to explore the ephemeral function of public objects while providing a fresh and light hearted perspective on exhibition spaces and supplementing his income from working as a Christmas tree salesman, pumpkin carver, sailor on the New York Harbor and costume fabricator for the Rockettes. Traynor’s current body of work is an extension of this practice. 

View Can Opener of Myself in New York through January 19th.