Everything Must Go

The Toys of Randy Regier
2003/2004

In 2002 I was approached by Bill North, the senior curator at the Marianna Kistler-Beach Museum of Art in Manhattan, Kansas with an invitation for a solo exhibition of my toy work(s). We discussed what the ideal installation might look like and I suggested that my ideal vision was a smarmy, 'teetering upon defunct' toy store of the aesthetic that one might have seen in the early 1970s; a downtown store listlessly losing its life to the new mall in the suburbs. To my surprise and obvious glee, Bill was thinking exactly the same thing. The result was this installation which involved renovating (de-novating?) the white museum space into a room and environment that evoked the surrender of childhood. The artist Marvin Gould handled the sign painting on the interior walls and exhibition designer Lindsay Smith most of the construction. During the course of the show an era-correct transistor radio played early 70's AM radio music over the droning of the adjacent electric fan and the time clock would 'chunk' every minute. "Value ZEST" came about by virtue of serendipity, those were the letters I happened to find at a salvage yard.

The Marianna Kistler-Beach Museum of Art, 2003/2004