Under the fluorescent lights of discount superstores, Halloween plates dotted with jack-o’-lanterns and metallic mechanical pens sparkle.

Situated on accessible shelves, the products shine at customers, enticing them with their $1 price tags.

“Trigger Items: illusions in discount shopping,” by Karen Hernandez, is the newest installation at the Herberger College of the Arts’ Step Gallery, examining the use of strategically placed products in discount stores and the illusions they create.

“When you go into a store, you have a lot of ideas about the objects and the idea of needs versus desires gets clouded,” said Hernandez, a painting senior.

Motivated by her own experiences at stores like Target and Wal-Mart, Hernandez said she was intrigued when she realized one day while shopping that she was “on autopilot.”

“In my artwork, I wanted to focus on the interactions you encounter with the items and your perceived notions around them,” Hernandez said. “I realized that I don’t need most of those items in there.”

At the exhibit’s opening reception Monday night, graphic design junior Princess Taylor grinned while examining “Too Many Choices.”
“I work at Target,” she said. “So it’s interesting to see the products I see everyday in a new way.”

The painting features rows of bright colored, consumer-friendly products like Altoids and Tic Tacs.

“Most of the time people go into stores for what they need,” Taylor said. “They don’t think about product design.”

Hernandez hopes visitors leave the gallery and reexamine the messages that discount shopping items communicate.

In “Shelf Life,” two side-by-side paintings show empty shelves that were once stocked with coffee makers.

“I want people to think about the items not always being in stock,” she said. “The empty shelf is alluding to where did the products come from and where do they go?”

“Trigger Items: illusions in discount shopping” runs until Oct. 17 at the Step Gallery. The gallery is open Monday through Thursday from 11:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

Reach the reporter at whitney.clark@asu.edu