Chicago-based artist Brian Ulrich documents the shopping habits of Americans in his incisive photographic series Copia. The photographs in this ongoing project are taken in big-box retail stores such as Target or Wal-Mart using a medium-format film camera with a waist-level viewfinder.

In Ulrich's first solo exhibition at MCASD, he presents 14 large-scale prints of the series. While many of the works capture the efficient artificiality of our shopping environments, others evidence the effects of consumerism on those who participate in its rituals of consumption. Ulrich sees the series as an exercise in social anthropology that documents common conditioned behavior and examines its political implications. Yet, the images are also revealing for the sense of familiarity and empathy they elicit in each of us, bringing attention to our role in generating and maintaining a culture of over-consumption and waste.