Robert Willcox
Masking
2021 | BFA Thesis Exhibition
Masking
Artist Statement
Masking is a collection of sculptures and digitally rendered images inspired by my interest in and investigations of contemporary beauty products and practices. This body of work explores motivations behind beautifying treatments and the way these motivations are manifested both personally and culturally.
In these works, beauty objects are recontextualized to explore the way they might operate in fantastical scenes, in potential futures, and as distorted cultural relics. The faces of sheet masks confront the viewer and reflect feelings of discomfort and disassociation. Overall, these works ask the viewer to reassess the values of our culture and consider the costs of ephemeral pleasures.
About the Artist
Robert Willcox is a 3D artist and sculptor based in Fairbanks, Alaska and Suncheon, South Korea. Through studying anthropology, Willcox began to view everyday objects and routines with more importance than he had before. Conflicted feelings about beauty, health, culture, and consumerism play out in his works and seemingly-mundane objects are recontextualized and given new life (and death) in both digital and physical form. Willcox’s sculptures and photorealistic digitally rendered images seek to complicate viewers’ understandings of contemporary beauty practices and question the motives behind them.
Willcox received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Alaska Fairbanks.