More than meets the eye

I finally finished the sculpture I was working on in March! It is an Transformer in the style of the old 80's cartoon. In that way it is sort of a Pop-art sculpture, but I have tried to bring it further by using a sheep skull suggesting it transforms out of a sheep skull. The original thought was finding a real life character like that on one of my fellrunning trips.

Design

This character is a mix of the Transformer characters of Cliffjumper, Ratchet and Jazz. I originally started making this sculpture to make it actually transform out of the skull by using all kinds of joints, but the kept breaking. I mightdo another attempt with the experience I have now, but the robot would look less cool, because I would have been a lot more limited in the design to fit it in the skull.

Connection with artist statement

More than meets the eye is about the hidden agenda of commercial organisations, an agenda we consumers forget to often and makes us believe in them and create this consuming religion we see now. The agenda is actually not hidden, if we use our heads we know that these companies aren't for charity and just want our money, but we seem to have forgotten this and have unquestionable believe in them. Time for some healthy paranoia when we buy something. Why Transformers? This cartoon was the first of television programme that had one goal; selling toys instead of making a cartoon. The toys existed before the cartoon and where made by a Japanese company. Eventually an American company took over and used the cartoon as advertisement for the toys. I loved the toys as a child and still do. I think this was quite an innocent way they used marketing tools, but marketing tools are getting increasingly unethical. They know exactly with which words they can make us think the sell good quality, but because those words have a wider meaning than our own association, they can sell lower quality with us feeling good buying it. For example, the word 'fresh'. We mostly associate fresh with, something just harvested. When they write 'freshly made' we still think the end product is fresh, but was actually made when it still was fresh and than they put it in a freezer for half a year. More than meets the eye!