Gallery

17th century Dutch artists painted food in minute realistic detail, creating luscious arrays of fruit and bread and wine. 20th century American artists played with their food, stuffing giant sagging cake sculptures and minimizing bananas to their barest reproducible values. For the 21st century artist, there is a world of food art and food issues to allude and respond to, or confront, or subvert, or ignore. This gallery links to contemporary artists who frequently employ food as a medium or theme or inspiration.These images are randomly assorted. Click on any of them to view at a larger size and read more.

: In Processed Views: Surveying the Industrial Landscape, Barbara Ciurej & Lindsay Lochman collaborate on striking landscape photographs built out of processed food.

: Jessica Hlavac sculpts entire meals out of clay, most of which are small enough to fit on a coin.

: Dimitri Tsykalov carves skulls out of fruits and vegetables–some rotting–in a play on memento mori.

: In many of Emily Burns’ photos and paintings, female faces have been smeared with foods like Jell-O or icing.

: Yeongju Sung

: Detail of a gummy bear Chandelier by Kevin Champeny.

: Michael Aaron Williams paints gorgeous evocative portraits on old ledger paper, with coffee as ink.

: In her series titled “What Have You Got in Your Head?” Sara Asnaghi sculpts brains out all kinds of materials, frequently foodstuffs.

: In his collection Disparity, Christopher Boffoli places tiny handmade figures on food, making the edible objects a vast landscape for his tiny people.

: Amelia Fais Harnas: “I create portraits by staining fabric with red wine using a wax resist (much like batiks) to build a light/dark pattern. I may decide to add embroidery (split stitch, to be precise) or machine sewing to reinforce the design or composition. The end result is a blend of chaos and control.”

: Lee Price frames herself in each painting so that the viewer is looking in on her in a private place – her bed, the bath, a closet – eating comfort or junk food.

: Saxton Freymann’s tableaux of interacting food sculptures are widely distributed in seven childrens’ books, as well as other paper goods such as postcards.

: Scott Gunderson arranges the corks from wine bottles to approximate the light and shade of a drawing from a photograph.

: Turkish artist Sakir Gökçebag photographs edible objects that he has meticulously sliced and arranged in geometric patterns.

: Carne Griffiths works with ink, graphite, and liquids such as tea, whiskey, and vodka to produce human and floral forms.

: Maja Cule plays with gender and race expectations using the visual language of stock photography.

: In her series From Scratch, Judith G. Klausner plays with skills that are traditionally considered “domestic arts” or “crafts”: cooking, embroidery, etc.

: Nadine Boughton’s series The Pleasures of Modern Living collages images from vintage magazines to explore, among other things, “food as an object of desire and comfort.”