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New York-based artist Darren Bader is back with a new exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art called ‘Fruits, Vegetables; Fruit and Vegetable Salad’.
Exhibition viewers will take an elevator to the eighth floor of the Whitney Museum of American Art and see a range of fruit and vegetable displayed like small sculptures on plinths.
For times a week, gallery staff will collect the fruit and veg and make it into a salad. The washing, chopping and dicing are filmed and the film is projected onto the gallery wall, the salad is served to the viewers and the whole process is repeated.
Bader, an artist known for his irreverent style has a history with the food as a medium in his art. He famously created ‘Heroin Lasagne’, which, as the name suggests, consisted of a lasagne that was injected with heroin.
Courtesy of the Artist and Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York
Food is a topic of hot discussion in the art world at the moment and as future food and its production become more and more central in our daily lives we will see more it become the focus of artists’ expression.
Italian artists Maurizio Cattelan made a splash at the Art Basel fair at the end of last year when his ‘Banana’, was first sold for $120,000 and then eaten by a performance artist, because, he said, he was ‘hungry’.
Bader, for his part, is making commentary about the role that food plays in our lives as well as our current fascination for food entertainment and perhaps, more importantly, he challenges us to think differently about what art can be and how galleries can exhibit it.
Fruits, Vegetables; Fruit and Vegetable Salad’ runs at the Whitney Museum of American Art from 15 January until 17 February.
