Context

My main influence for the work was Banksy, primarily the flippant attitude expressed in some of his more popular graffiti. To Banksy, his medium is inherently criminal, and many of his works in some way comment on or revel in that aspect: Banksy is an outlaw, and while you may appreciate his art in a vaccuum, in a very real sense there is an act of vandalism involved (although it can be argued now that his "vandalism" actually increases property values, but I digress.) I sought to combine the idea of flippancy through medium and readymade appropriation ala Warhol and Ai WeiWei. The end result endeavors to challenge you: the work presents a clear narrative of the events as they appear to be, it celebrates the subversive means by which it implies it's subjects,  it champions the unusual character of the subject (implied to be the artist) and it even takes the claim literally, prompting the viewer to make a monetary offer on the work.

But why composites? Well, remember, part of the idea behind the work was to make people uncomfortable with the appropriation, and to do this, I elected to make it reminiscent of an actual campus phenomenon: Greek Organizations stealing composites from one another for sport. This typically happens in the summer session, when Greek houses on campus generate less persistent traffic, and there is a sort of reputation metagame for people who can collect -- and manage to hold on to-- the most diverse and modern set of composites before they are inevitably found out and asked to return them. Composites that are more modern, or belonging to a larger organization, are generally considered more valuable because of the difficulty involved in cleanly removing them from a greek org's house and walking them to whatever destination they're bound for. On top of that, sorority composites are more valuable still, since they tend to get very angry when they realize that someone has taken theirs, despite doing the exact same thing over the years.

That being said, the two composites depicted actually would have the market value implied in the work's title... people will pay money to put a composite from a large sorority and place it in a house on, say, Beeler or Wilkins. It's a social status thing, I guess, especially since many people on campus are likely to recognize some of the people in one of the readymades.