Carson Davis Brown’s Mass series kicked off spontaneously after an aisle in his local Meijer—a midwestern store chain—packed with bright yellow packaging caught his eye. The artist corralled the objects, snapped a photo, and put the items back in their rightful spots. Pretty soon, he was making larger installations, filming and photographing the masses, and leaving them for people to discover.

While the images of the meticulous, borderline obsessive installations are curious and make you wonder what they are, the project doesn’t stop at a snapshot of the installation. It’s about altering our perception of retail spaces and what constitutes their landscape. (It’s not, as I incorrectly thought, about an F-U to big-box stores.)