Carson Davis Brown Creates In-Store Installations Without Permission

Carson Davis Brown’s “Mass” project puts site-specific, color-based installations in big box stores and other “places of mass” without permission. These visual disruptions take otherwise disparate objects and groups them into temporary sculptures. The project has taken the artist to stores across the U.S. A primary charge for the project is to make passers-by more aware of their environment by recontextualizing the items around them.

“At an intersection between Street Art and Land Art, installations are made without permission, using found materials within the retail landscape,” The works are made, photographed, then left to be experienced by passersby and ultimately dissembled by location staff. Mass works are also initially exhibited in a consumer landscape. Printed, framed and exhibited in-stores all without permission.”

The installations are typically disassembled by store employees soon after construction. Yet, that’s only the first part of the works’ lives. “Carefully photographing these sculptures of ephemera before they are eroded by store employees is as important as erecting them,” the artist adds.

The artist is based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he’s the documentarian and media director at Cabin-Time.