The viewer is cast as the customer and the beholder before the ‘tease’ that is his work. Its intent is to prompt lust, tantamount to a shopper’s lust amongst opulent goods. This is realized through the agency of conventionally opulent articles such as velvet, gem stones (in this case faux), silk and gold (faux too). The materials perform the riches of sumptuous goods and their displays, they need not always be the true mediums they propose to be. His work in this case is overtly artificial, heeding towards the true ‘false’ nature of the consumer sphere. Our notions of quality product are primed - primed by the retailer; “faux” has become less a concept conjunctive with inferior purchases, but is, with an increasing extent, used by 'high end' outlets. Notions of quality change and are defined at the will of the retailer. His sculptures play mimicry with product arrangement and relocate the realm of those outlets into the exhibition space; the transfer affords insight into our own obedience in their game.
Robert Frederick Green
Desire is, as in any commercial sector marketed through display and advertisements; luxury induces the intoxication of an ideal. Robert Frederick Green (Wimbledon College of Arts) and (Royal College of Art) makes faux retail displays and furnishings that allude to the nature of this temptation, he compares the commercial setting as a flirt; that in all consciousness uses sex, gender, wealth and material to conjure the physical manifestation of allure that is ultimately a purchase. His work highlights the industry through its own self-awareness and inclusion within it. He critiques, yet seeks not to expose consumer culture, the culture is already intrinsically unambiguous and self-exposing. His outcomes trace an exercise in the understanding of a structure that we as the consumer are drawn into with ease; despite full knowledge of its strategic and defined marketing systems.