Adapted from the exhibition's press release

Consider the life that’s sold to you—through cultural bias, gender stereotypes, and the relentless machinery of capitalism. The appearance of your home, the way you dress, your access to nature and beauty—these markers of success are interrogated in the works of Alex Ebstein and Amy Boone-McCreesh. Dream Sellers explores the pressures of societal expectations, peeling back the glossy veneer to reveal the complexities beneath.

Artists have long held mirrors to their worlds, and Ebstein and Boone-McCreesh do so with bold, tactile mixed-media works that examine the narratives shaping modern life. Body ideals, advertising tropes, slick retail displays, and domestic life are deconstructed to challenge assumptions about class, beauty, and the promise of upward mobility.

Alex Ebstein’s pieces, created in small series, continue her transformation of yoga mats and powder-coated metal into striking forms—eyes, curves, and limbs that teeter between the literal and the abstract. Much of her work, produced in a compact apartment studio since the onset of quarantine, reflects the contrast between ad-saturated virtual windows and the solitary routines of isolation. Shimmering surfaces, adorned with embroidery, acrylic, and other embellishments, evoke a collision of glamour and reality.

In this world mediated by social media, aspiration and intention mingle with dreamlike indulgence—part diary, part time capsule, part suspended reality. As the ways we connect are disrupted and redefined, the weight of societal pressures—female competition, health trends, beauty ideals—begins to dissolve. What remains are flimsy symbols, stripped of their power to divide, inviting us to reconsider what truly matters in our pursuit of success.

Alex Ebstein makes mixed media, tactile, abstractions using found, readymade and traditional materials - most notably yoga mats.  Her work borrows materials used in gym equipment, yoga and dance studios, and DIY construction projects to examine the tropes of self-help, wellness, the white cube and boutique fitness trends.  These specific, aestheticized spaces imply the patronage of an elite clientele, projecting health, fitness and art as an often cost-prohibitive commodity.  Ebstein uses lighthearted motifs as a counterbalance to the critical questions at the core of her work.