Eat Me (2014)
"Eat Me" combines the high-gloss, commercial look of advertising with the classic tradition of still life to comment on the fabrication and commercialization of increasingly unnatural, mass-produced food products.
Still life painting traditionally allowed for something fleeting (a vase of flowers, a bowl of fruit) to live on within the canvas. In contrast, the subjects of these tableaus (jelly beans, gummy candies, processed cakes) have a seemingly infinite shelf life. Furthermore, the traditional, still life medium of painting has been replaced by the instantaneous tools of digital, studio-lit photography to visually communicate a growing, consumerist demand for instantaneous gratification and colorful, factory-perfect products. These aesthetically pleasing, saturated images harbor a darker reality: our society's mass production and consumption of factory-created food products and sweets.
Still life painting traditionally allowed for something fleeting (a vase of flowers, a bowl of fruit) to live on within the canvas. In contrast, the subjects of these tableaus (jelly beans, gummy candies, processed cakes) have a seemingly infinite shelf life. Furthermore, the traditional, still life medium of painting has been replaced by the instantaneous tools of digital, studio-lit photography to visually communicate a growing, consumerist demand for instantaneous gratification and colorful, factory-perfect products. These aesthetically pleasing, saturated images harbor a darker reality: our society's mass production and consumption of factory-created food products and sweets.
