On second thought, no dessert for me. CHECK PLEASE!!!

September 23, 2014 7:38 PM

The art world's food fetish is nothing new, triggering equal parts salivation and repulsion we gorge on so-called 'food porn' every day, saturating our screens with sugar. But beneath that candy-cane filter there's a darker side to our fetishisation of all-things sweet. With their Twix noses, salami decolletage and strawberry laces spewing from donut-shaped carverns, James Ostrer's saccharine-warped creations are delectably disturbing. Born out of a textbook childhood junk addiction, his new series Wotsit All About takes sugar worship to the extreme, sculpting mutated, larger-than-life candy characters from truck-loads of pick 'n' mix favourites. Pushing his sitters to the extreme he smothers them in cream cheese, frazzles and ice-cream cones, the food masks leaving a claustrophic, bitter-sweet taste on the tongue. Interview with the photographer. [NSFW]
posted by Room 641-A (26 comments total)

Delicious!
posted by unliteral at 7:53 PM on September 23, 2014

salami decolletage? if i were making a dessert doll, i'd use two chocolate kisses for that.
posted by bruce at 7:59 PM on September 23, 2014

I can't say as that I care for it.
posted by angerbot at 8:13 PM on September 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

It's amazing what passes for art these days.

Yes, I know it's a cliche, but stil...
posted by harrietthespy at 8:22 PM on September 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

lol. I like these.
posted by turbid dahlia at 8:44 PM on September 23, 2014

Mid-seventies fourth grade we had a field trip to a candy factory in Seattle. A field trip to a candy damn factory. The ladies wearing the hairnets who worked there were having a blast feeding us warm minty chocolate Frangoes as they came down the production line and chopping up pounds and pounds of taffy and every type of candy from minty spiral candy canes to great gobs of warm apple flavored something.
posted by vapidave at 10:21 PM on September 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

I'm pretty sure this is the next evolutionary stage of Lady Gaga.
posted by Faint of Butt at 1:50 AM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

The art world's food fetish is nothing new . . .



Eh?
 
posted by Herodios at 4:07 AM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

I don't get it. They just look like regular people. Tasty, tasty people.
posted by orme at 4:11 AM on September 24, 2014

I must be getting old, because I'm with Harriet. The bar for "art" should be set higher than just doing something cuh-razy, like covering people's heads with frosting, and taking pictures. Seems like a lot of postmodern art is like this—either intentionally designed to provoke a "lolwut so random" reaction, or simply chosen out of a hat, as if any concept is as good as any other. (I can't believe I'm playing the role of contemporary-art Philistine, but here I am.)
posted by escape from the potato planet at 5:10 AM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Looks like rejected characters from The Mighty Boosh/Luxury Comedy. Does Noel Fielding know about this guy?
posted by davros42 at 5:40 AM on September 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

So, the show is photographs? Thank heavens, because my first thought on looking at these was UGH the SMELL! I can barely walk through a candy aisle in a grocer without gagging--the aroma of artificial flavorings is overwhelming, and the things are still in plastic. These creations must be overpoweringly cloying in person.

Not a fan of Factory Candy. Give me, however, a tray of homemade scratch fudge...
posted by kinnakeet at 5:43 AM on September 24, 2014

Attempting to shock is so OLD and BORING. Much of contemporary art these days is so pedestrian and banal it's just ridiculous.

But there are wonderful glorious exceptions.
posted by leotrotsky at 6:32 AM on September 24, 2014

These pictures would be perfect to decorate a child's bedroom or nursery.
posted by Flashman at 6:34 AM on September 24, 2014

These pictures would be perfect to decorate a child's bedroom or nursery.

...not if you want them to sleep there.
posted by leotrotsky at 6:36 AM on September 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

Oh c'mon--nobody else thinks these are scary and beautiful?
posted by The Minotaur at 7:41 AM on September 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

The art world's food fetish is nothing new . . .
Eh?

Just off the top of my head:

Giuseppe Arcimboldo 1527 - 1593

Dieter Roth 1930 - 1998

Sandy Skoglund
posted by R. Mutt at 7:48 AM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

GROSS, OMG
posted by moonlight on vermont at 8:01 AM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

I must be getting old, because I'm with Harriet. The bar for "art" should be set higher than just doing something cuh-razy, like covering people's heads with frosting, and taking pictures.

I dunno, I think these photographs are communicating something. There's a commentary on people as product, disposable, ephemeral. Or the associations of gorging on candy with childhood. Or even looking at obesity & diabetes.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:16 AM on September 24, 2014

I must be getting old, because I'm with Harriet. The bar for "art" should be set higher than just doing something cuh-razy, like covering people's heads with frosting, and taking pictures. Seems like a lot of postmodern art is like this—either intentionally designed to provoke a "lolwut so random" reaction, or simply chosen out of a hat, as if any concept is as good as any other. (I can't believe I'm playing the role of contemporary-art Philistine, but here I am.)

You could simply call this bad art. You don't have to be a philistine to hold that opinion.
posted by LogicalDash at 8:20 AM on September 24, 2014

It's not "not art" because you don't like it; it's "art" because you didn't do it first.

Besides, they really are very well done, for what they are.
posted by Curious Artificer at 8:33 AM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Just off the top of my head:

I was responding to the hype, not the use of materials.

"The art world's food fetish is nothing new" does not mean the same thing as "other people have used food to make art". Compare with these more moderate statements from your links:

Giuseppe Arcimboldo . . . creat[ed] imaginative portrait heads made entirely of [representations of] fruits, vegetables, flowers, fish, and books . . .

or

Chocolate, cheese, spices, sugar and even bird seed – rather unusual in the art context – are the materials Dieter Roth used for his multiples.

On the other hand, it seems like this artist may himself be exhibiting some kind of fetish. I am not his shrink. What do I know, Vincent van Gogh got so excited by his work that he ate his paint.

As to the work: The grotesque in art is a pretty well-established form. I'm not seeing that using edible materials in this way adds anything, and the hype is just hype.

On the other foot ( I must be out of hands by now), the Tara Donovan work linked by Leotrotsy is quite impressive.

So thanks for that.
 
posted by Herodios at 8:37 AM on September 24, 2014

It's put me off junk food (for a day or two, anyway) so I think the project is probably working the way the photographer intended.

Then again, having a pre-existing aversion to anthropomorphic food probably makes me more vulnerable to its effects.
posted by Room 641-A at 8:47 AM on September 24, 2014

The bar for "art" should be set higher than just doing something cuh-razy

There's no bar for what is art. You wouldn't read a crappy novel and say, "this isn't writing, the bar for writing should be set higher," so why think about art that way?
posted by oulipian at 9:30 AM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

You wouldn't read a crappy novel and say, "this isn't writing, the bar for writing should be set higher," so why think about art that way?

Some folks do think that way:

"At Northport Watering Hole, Kerouac Was Just Another Drinker" [ Sept. 13 ] , Patrick Fenton neglected to mention Truman Capote's flip dismissal of Kerouac's work as follows, "That's not writing, that's typing." (NYT)
posted by R. Mutt at 10:23 AM on September 24, 2014

Flashman: These pictures would be perfect to decorate a child's bedroom or nursery.

You misspelled "desecrate".

NBD; it's a common misteak.
posted by IAmBroom at 11:01 AM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]