Artist Statement

By Robert Weir

As someone immersed in the new reality of online social networking and self-promotion, model and actor-types are coming out of the woodwork and designing their own Web pages, self-publishing through their own blogs and of course, taking their own highly stylized photos.

Viewers want to look like them, meet them, date them and have sex with them. After all, they are real people. I've taken these photos and transferred them to a more traditional context and adjusted the images to look more traditionally attractive. Their clothes, make-up and hair are of the moment; personifying the looks for 2006. My goal in my drawings and paintings is to respond to this age of self-portraiture by creating a romanticized version of other people that can seemingly only exist right now.

My drawings are made from a mixture of pencil crayon and blue ballpoint pen. They are the tools I used when I was in high school (when I was roughly the same age as my subjects) and complement the youth on display. Each picture is like a secret note to a classmate or a drawing of a high school crush. The only things around them are two-dimensional acrylic shapes that represent the simplicity of the world they inhabit - a world that is so often defined only by simple things like favourite films, books and music.

As an installation artist, I create simple, sensory experiences that viewers can easily understand. The works are large and designed to overwhelm the viewer. Body Image Disordered is a body falling out of its skin that is tattooed with the face on it over and over. The piece is made out of delicate paper and fabric to represent the frailty of those who are inflicted with body dimorphic disorder.

In the work entitled Needs I explore the Maslow's Hierarchy Of Needs by depicted each need in a photograph transferred onto a lace cube. The cubes are arranges in a whirlwind to represent the challenges and confusion I go through on my path to self-actualization.

Bedroom Wallpaper was created for a wallpaper themed show. It was my bedroom wallpaper as a child printed on clear plastic. I freed the pattern from the wall and allowed it to float away.