Wheat is Wheat is Wheat: Peddy Mergui
The exhibition Wheat is Wheat is Wheat explores the intersection of design and ethics, through a series of objects that apply luxury branding to supermarket items.
Featuring the work of Tel Aviv–based artist designer Peddy Mergui, the exhibition examines the designer’s role in a field designated to give shape to an idea, while recruited to effectively serve economic interests. Works in the exhibition borrow their forms from the world of consumption and their concepts from the field of consumer ethics. They expose the often arbitrary connection that a product has to its packaging.
Consumer validation is a recurring theme for Mergui, as he asks a customer actually purchases when he or she pays a premium for a ‘brand’ of wheat flour or table salt? A question is raised as to whether the consumer places higher value on the packaging than the condition of the item inside and its ability to fulfil its advertised need.
Wheat is Wheat is Wheat exaggerates the aesthetic and conceptual triggers that influence consumer trends and manipulate the relationship between an object and an ideal.
Wheat is Wheat is Wheat is on display at the Museum of Craft and Design, San Francisco, USA until Sunday 15 June 2014.
—
