Synthetic Love

Installation/Sculpture

2024

Consider a plastic rose exchanged between two people. On the surface, the rose mimics depth and beauty but remains clear and hollow. When it inevitably snaps—fragile in its cheapness—its value dissipates. It is discarded, thrown to landfill, and forgotten. Buried under the ground, divorced from light, it doesn’t decompose.
The rose’s journey is a metaphor for contemporary relationships, where love and friendship are commodified, evidenced by the rise of situationships and self-optimization culture. People reduce themselves to presentable packages, much like single-use plastics. We consume one another selfishly, discarding the relationship when it no longer serves us or when the insecure foundation inevitably disintegrates.
As these relationships accumulate, we become the landfill, obstructing the ecosystem’s regenerative process. Relationships devolve into transactions, prioritizing appearance over substance, self-interest over vulnerable connection, resulting in a meaningless exchange.

Process: The work began as a 2 ft by 2 ft cube of Styrofoam, which I carved into a sphere using a hot wire tool. I hollowed out part of the interior, painting it with gold acrylic paint and spraying patina over it while the paint was still wet.
For the material surrounding the sphere, I collected various plastic trash objects from my house, the trash, and my room. Each item was individually glued on using hot glue and then spray painted. The first coat of spray paint was white, followed by a faint coat of gold to add subtle texture.
As for the plastic roses, I collected egg cartons from my fridge, cut them into small pieces, used a lighter to warp the edges, and hot-glued the pieces together.

31 x 33 x 34 inches