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When you think of pictures of food—outside the context of a Denny's menu—you think "still life."
But Our Daily Bread, at Contemporary Arts Collective through November 6, offers a new take, something on the order of food portraits. The show takes a cue from Yum, a juried exhibition at CAC in 2003. But where that show was all over the smorgasbord, ranging from objects mimicking foodstuffs to fanciful depictions of would-be comestibles, Our Daily Bread consists almost entirely of paintings of actual foods.
For the most part, these are less components of still lifes than subjects of simple graphic narratives. Jack Endewelt's sumptuously painted candies, rendered in an idealizing, soft-focus manner, seem like unique characters, down to the gentle folds of their chocolate coatings. His large-scale "Russell Stover No. 1," aside from evoking that lusty anticipation upon opening such a box, reads like a group portrait—you wonder which is the nougat and which the gooey cherry, just as you might ponder the masked personalities of a team or class. To keep the exercise grounded though, Endewelt offers the diptych "Sweet Tooth," juxtaposing a candy and a grisaille rendering of a dental X-ray.
Lisa Stamanis zeroes in on counter items of plebeian eateries—the plain brown, concave coffee cup with a couple of peel-top creamers; the clear pilsener glass partly drained of pale liquid, next to a cell phone, with a trail of smoke intruding. They seem the forgotten minor characters of whatever drama transpires on the unseen stools beyond, Rosenglass and Gildenspoon, if you will. They also might be seen as the avatars of those imagined diners and drinkers, gearing up for the day ahead or winding down after it.
This is certainly the case with Marty Walsh's paintings of lunch-box contents. They are titled for the weekdays, but clearly do not represent one person's daily lunches.
Rather, they are alternative portraits of the workers who opened the boxes: the Winston smoker whose chrome Thermos proclaims his or her union membership in "Thursday," the lucky stiff looking forward to a snack pack and a couple of cheesy wraps on "Monday." You imagine "Wednesday's" spouse thoughtfully packing those healthful veggies, still in their sealable pouch, while the pastry has a couple of bites missing.
Victoria Reynolds literally gets into the meat of the matter. Her subjects do not stand in for their devourers; they simply are masses of muscle shot through with threads of fat, in some cases housed in elaborate frames painted in the same tones of rosy pink and cream. But the large-scale "Smear Campaign," which gives the illusion of tissuey depth, is unframed, with rounded edges, perhaps to simulate a pressed-meat tin.
At its best, Our Daily Bread plays on the venerable cliché about being what we eat, because the absent alimentary canals are the true subjects throughout.
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At Dust Gallery, Curtis Fairman's cleverly wrought assemblages of everyday items are paired with Brian Zink's minimalist patterns of molded plastic, for a show that asks you to find new configurations in life's banal commodities.
Fairman's familiar constructions that center aureoles of colorful spiral bands and reflecting chrome in bulbous forms continue to fascinate. They are so simple but anything but simpleminded. These sconce-like sculptures are augmented by freestanding saucers-on-pylons that read like toy Stratosphere towers.
Zink uses lengths of flat-toned plastic—some sort of decorative shell, maybe for billboard lettering?—to build op-art patterns, usually playing one color against another. Some are interlocking, and others are concentric U-shapes, and the tonal rhythms of the uniformly shaped segments can be engaging. But it's also something of a one-note symphony.