Art Gallery

Candy into Art
 

.
.

This is one of two Art Gallery pages. Click here for the other page.

Nicole Root and Paul Shore: “Licked, Sucked, Stacked, Stuck”

I WANT Candy: The Sweet Stuff in American Art

This museum exhibition featured some 40 American artists whose work incorporates images of candy and confection. The original show was curated by Bartholomew Bland and sponsored  by the Hudson River Museum (Yonkers, NY), June 16-Sept.2, 2007. The exhibit is making a national tour:

Woodson Art Museum
Wasau, Wisconsin
November 20, 2010-January 23, 2011

1911 Historic City Hall Arts and Cultural Center
Lake Charles, LA
June 18-August 21, 2010

Nicolaysen Art Museum
Casper,WY
October 2, 2009-January 3, 2010

If it hasn’t shown up in your town, you can explore the work in the Google-ized Exhibition Catalog.

Bland’s Introduction to the Exhibit Catalog provides an excellent interpretive contextualization of the pieces presented in the exhibit. From the Introduction:

In the years since the advent of Pop Art in the late 1950s, contemporary artists have embraced confections as one of their most popular subjects, and those sweets serve as metaphors for everything from the innocence of childhood to the promise of debauchery. Although images of candy are now frequently invoked in video art and installation works as metaphors ranging from decadent consumerism to childhood innocence, one of the pillars of candy art remains the traditional still life.

I agree, candy is pretty to paint. But to my eye, the less interesting works in this exhibit are those most firmly in the still life tradition: paintings of candy as an aesthetic object. The more interesting works are those that play with candy as a substance or as a medium, as in Will Cotton’s Candy Curls, the cover image of the exhibit catalog shown here. Here are a few others that are featured in the “I WANT Candy” show:

More of these artists’ work at their websites:
Will Cotton
Susan Graham
Jessica Schwind

Ammeil Mendoza: Objects of My Confection

Ammeil Mendoza is a photographer and designer currently completing her BFA in Graphic Design and Photography at Andrews University in Michigan. She explains this work as “A cross between my love for insects (albeit only when looking in natural history museums), and my love for candy.” Thanks to Katharine Weber for sending me the link to these fantastic images! More of Ammeil’s work can be seen at her website: www.ammielmendoza.com

Dan Colen: Paintings in Gum

When Dan Colen first started working with gum, he used to chew each piece and stick it down. That took a long time; in a year, he only finished three “paintings.” Now, he has a team of assistants heating the gum to use as a thick, colorful, sticky goo that dries like acrylic paint. This top image is an example of the former technique, from 2008; it recently sold for about $70,000. But when I look at it, I’m reminded of “gum alley,” the work of much less storied artist (see it in my Art Gallery). The bottom work is from 2010, and you can appreciate the development of Colen’s more painterly technique with liquified gum.

A recent profile of Colen in the New York Times explains his gum paintings:

one of the works in question, a large abstract canvas that at first glance looks like a kind of crude homage to Jackson Pollock, also had the unmistakable whiff — literally — of the chewing gum in which it was covered. Nearby were bags and bags of the stuff: Orbit, Trident, Juicy Fruit, Big Red. Mr. Colen, whose work is often illusionistic in one way or another, said he first started using the material in 2005 and 2006, in trompe l’oeil sculptures of boulders with bird droppings and wads of gum painted on them. He used real gum as a reference, he said, and “the problem was it looked so much better than the paint.” So he began to explore the artistic possibilities of the stuff.

Colen has a solo show at the prestigious Gagosian Gallery this fall (2010); the gallery has a portfolio of Colen’s recent work available for viewing on line at http://www.gagosian.com/artists/dan-colen/#

Click here for more Art Gallery