The Largest Potluck on Earth

Slideluck Potshow, Ottawa. Photo via Slideluck Potshow Network.

Slideluck Potshow is a non-profit organization that exhibits works by both novice and established artists by way of slideshows. These public events, which are held all over the world, are each preceded by a two-hour potluck style dinner. Home-cooked dishes and drinks are provided by attendees.

The next Slideluck Potshow in New York City will be held under the Manhattan Bridge Archway on May 15. This particular event is competing to break The Guinness Book of World Records for the Largest Potluck on Earth. The current record holding potluck was sponsored by the makers of Promise margarine and offered 602 individual dishes. Slideluck Potshow will, in contrast, emphasize local and seasonal ingredients. To be part of this potentially historical event, go here to purchase tickets ($10-$20).

Also, check out the (soon to be updated) Slideluck Potshow recipe collection, where you'll find treats like Butterfinger Rum Cheesecake, Peach Custard Pie, and Coconut Date Rolls.

Brooklyn Ball 2010: The Remains (Updated)

Jennifer Rubell, Icons (detail), 2010. Animal and dimensions unknown. Photo: N.J. Caruth/Contemporary Confections.

Last night, the Brooklyn Museum held their annual fundraising gala, the Brooklyn Ball. In previous years, stars such as Kanye West, Marc Jacobs, Kristen Davis, and Linda Evangelista have been the talk of the evening. But this year was all about food celebrities. Chefs Mario Batali and Marcus Samuelsson were just two of the personalities on hand for the main attraction: an edible installation and interactive dinner created by rising food artist Jennifer Rubell.

Jennifer Rubell, Icons (detail), 2010. Rabbits, dimensions unknown. Photo: N.J. Caruth/Contemporary Confections.

Rubell's installation, Icons, was described as "an interactive food journey through the Museum." Cocktail hour included, among other things, drinking paintings, and suspended melting cheese heads. Mounds of beans, potatoes, salad greens, asparagus, and various proteins set atop large plywood boxes comprised the serve-yourself dinner feast. Though I couldn't participate in this (expensive) eating experience, I did get a peak at the remains during the after party. While others were in the lobby sipping cocktails, and breaking open a colossal Warhol piñata filled with Sno Balls, Twinkies, Ding Dongs, other Hostess treats, I was looking at piles of cooked rabbits and mangled pig carcasses in the third-floor Beaux-Arts Court. I heard from a few meat lovers on staff that even they found this scene disturbing (see slideshow), but maybe that was the point.

In a recent panel discussion on gluttony in art, Rubell addressed her use of food as a medium, saying that her work “looks a lot like gluttony" -- a term with “an extreme moral component” -- yet morals around food are not what interest her as an artist. She is drawn to the aesthetic and psychological properties of food. This is what I find most intriguing about Rubell's work and the above images. The remains of dinner were hard to look at, yes, but also oddly hypnotizing. Visit Rubell's website to see more images from Icons.

More on Brooklyn Ball 2010:
Bloomberg
Eater
Eat Me Daily - Part I and II
Hyperallergic
Wall Street Journal
Women's Wear Daily

Review: Adam Schreiber at Sasha Wolf Gallery

Adam Schreiber, Whitehouse Switchboard, 1969 - 2001, 2010. Inkjet print on archival paper. Courtesy the artist and Sasha Wolf Gallery, New York.

Today's issue of …might be good, a contemporary art e-journal based in Austin, Texas, includes my review of Anachronic, a solo exhibition of works by Austin-based photographer Adam Schreiber. An excerpt:

Adam Schreiber’s small solo exhibition at Sasha Wolf Gallery [in New York] is largely inspired by his research at three archival facilities: the Lyndon B. Johnson Library & Museum, the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, and J. J. Pickle Research Center. The connection between these annals is, to an Austin outsider, as much a mystery as the artist’s photographs. Schreiber’s mixed bag of images—an old switchboard, a model moon, a set of toothbrushes with a presidential seal, a nigh-lit stadium and a forest landscape, for instance—look entirely unrelated rather than, as the exhibition title Anachronic implies, out of chronological order. This might compel one, just as archives do, to dig.

However, the history behind Schreiber’s subjects is only slightly more engaging than the photos themselves. [1] Upon consultation of this history, Schreiber’s photographs, like the scrambled pieces of a boxed puzzle, start to make sense in view of the bigger picture. His rejection of linear and written narrative affirms the obvious: how we view objects is largely a result of how they’re framed.

Continue reading here.

What Happened to the Winner of ArtPrize 2009?

Ran Ortner and his assistant at work. Courtesy the artist.

You might recall reading about my trip to ArtPrize -- a new experimental art competition in Grand Rapids, Michigan -- in the fall.* This international contest is decided solely by public vote. Ten finalists (individual artists or collectives) are awarded a total of $449,000, with $250,000 of that pot going to the first place winner. I recently caught up with the winner of last year's grand prize, the Brooklyn-based painter Ran Ortner. Go to the ArtPrize blog to read my interview with the artist, in which he discusses the impact of ArtPrize on his life and work.

*Artist registration for ArtPrize 2010 closes May 27. Get more information about sign up here.

Gastro-Vision: On Cake

Clare Grill, When You Get That Old, 2009. Oil on linen over panel, 20 x 16 in. Courtesy the artist.

Gastr0-Vision is the title of my monthly column on the Art21 blog. The series is dedicated to all things food in contemporary art and visual culture.

This month, I've written about three artists who take vastly different approaches to my most loved confection: cake. Here's an excerpt:

My love of cake straddles the line between innocent obsession and utter perversion. I tend to think of cakes like my favorite celebrity bodies. Be it big and firm like Hugh Jackman, petite and voluptuous like Salma Hayek, or thick and stacked à la Serena Williams, I have never laid eyes on a cake I didn’t fancy the same way. In my most delicious and twisted fantasy, I die face-down in red velvet with pound cake in my left hand and German chocolate in my right—an orgy so sweet that it literally takes me all the way to heaven. You see, I am absolutely crazy about cake, and so the (self-indulgent) focus of this Gastro-Vision post...

Continue reading here.

Eye Candy: Jennifer Poon

Jennifer Poon, Sleep. Watercolor, gouache, on cut paper. Courtesy Claire Oliver Gallery.

In A Temporary Space, Jenifer Poon's upcoming exhibition at Claire Oliver Gallery, she reflects on her recent experience with familial death and on our expectations of the people closest to us. The artist says, “We remember those who have passed on with a different stream of consciousness, we find our own meaning in what was reality; death sanitizes everything.”

For this installation, Poon has created her fragmented watercolored bodies in both two and three dimensions. Central to the exhibition are a life sized human form, created from bits of fabric that have been sewn, tied and quilted; and an altar piece holding clay amulets, each adorned with a small portrait and line of text. Both pieces speak to Poon's interest in the role of ritual in contemporary culture.

A Temporary Space is on view April 17 - May 15.