Contemporary art museum exhibit brings desserts from table to canvas
December 14, 2010
“Suspect” by Daniel Douke, an acrylic on canvas painting, is part of Sweet Tooth, an exhibit at the Scott Richards Contemporary Art Museum. Sweet Tooth includes contributions from multiple artists in various styles.
“Suspect” by Daniel Douke, an acrylic on canvas painting, is part of Sweet Tooth, an exhibit at the Scott Richards Contemporary Art Museum. Sweet Tooth includes contributions from multiple artists in various styles.
Isabelle Pinard
Reporter
A lair of tempting treats is no place for those whose stomachs are half empty. Hungry visitors might find themselves unable to keep their wandering fingers from going over the security lines in an attempt to touch the yellow-glazed tarts and crème brules hung on the walls of Sweet Tooth, an exhibit at the Scott Richards Contemporary Art Museum.
The exhibit engulfs the viewer’s senses in rich colors and textures of something not often admired — desserts. Viewers walk into the gallery lines with paintings of ice cream lazily dripping down the side of an impeccable glass bowl, experience the saccharine glaze of an éclair, and taste every morsel of sugar that is inside those Peach O’s which are lying nonchalantly on an unguarded table.
“My paintings in Sweet Tooth should allow the viewer to re-discover the essence of things that have become so ordinary from its DNA to the level of universal structure, in all its beauty,” artist Tjalf Sparnaay said. “I call it the beauty of the contemporary commonplace.”
The exhibit gives a twist to everyday sweets, hosting Pop artists Wayne Thiebaud, and Mel Ramos, abstract commercial-good artists Alex Blau, Ben Schonzeit, Peter and Madaline Powell, and realistic painters Tjalf Sparnaay and Daniel Douke.
“The wonderful thing about painting as a human invention is that it has been able to anthologize a kind of human consciousness,” Thiebaud said. “All of our sides, from the most majestic ideas to the brute level of terror.”
Thiebaud’s “Study for Gumball Machines” appears simple, but the power is in the image itself, which makes the jaw move with muscle memory from childhood as the fingers reminisce about moments of touching the waxy coating of a well-deserved gumball from the doctor’s office or candy shop.
“Seeing the world as a realist, representational painting engaged me,” Douke said. “As a young artist I was inspired by Marcel Duchamp, along with Minimalism’s concept of specific objects and a Pop art use of common imagery.”
Daniel Douke’s painting “Suspect” is both breathtaking and torturing. The orange custard flower seems to grow bigger with each second until viewers realizes they’re actually moving toward it.
“Painting can be a kind of miracle because it is a total unnatural act of making a three-dimension object on two-dimensional paper,” Thiebaud said. “It is a process and sometimes you are amused by things turning out the way they do. My restaurant-themed paintings come from experiences of working in restaurants, so in some sense most of my paintings are kind of like a diary of growing up.”
Sweet Tooth continues to display treats through Dec. 31, Tuesdays and Fridays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 251 Post street suite 425 between Grant and Stockton. Admission is free.
A lair of tempting treats is no place for those whose stomachs are half empty. Hungry visitors might find themselves unable to keep their wandering fingers from going over the security lines in an attempt to touch the yellow-glazed tarts and crème brules hung on the walls of Sweet Tooth, an exhibit at the Scott Richards Contemporary Art Museum.
The exhibit engulfs the viewer’s senses in rich colors and textures of something not often admired — desserts. Viewers walk into the gallery lines with paintings of ice cream lazily dripping down the side of an impeccable glass bowl, experience the saccharine glaze of an éclair, and taste every morsel of sugar that is inside those Peach O’s which are lying nonchalantly on an unguarded table.
“My paintings in Sweet Tooth should allow the viewer to re-discover the essence of things that have become so ordinary from its DNA to the level of universal structure, in all its beauty,” artist Tjalf Sparnaay said. “I call it the beauty of the contemporary commonplace.”
The exhibit gives a twist to everyday sweets, hosting Pop artists Wayne Thiebaud, and Mel Ramos, abstract commercial-good artists Alex Blau, Ben Schonzeit, Peter and Madaline Powell, and realistic painters Tjalf Sparnaay and Daniel Douke.
“The wonderful thing about painting as a human invention is that it has been able to anthologize a kind of human consciousness,” Thiebaud said. “All of our sides, from the most majestic ideas to the brute level of terror.”
Thiebaud’s “Study for Gumball Machines” appears simple, but the power is in the image itself, which makes the jaw move with muscle memory from childhood as the fingers reminisce about moments of touching the waxy coating of a well-deserved gumball from the doctor’s office or candy shop.
“Seeing the world as a realist, representational painting engaged me,” Douke said. “As a young artist I was inspired by Marcel Duchamp, along with Minimalism’s concept of specific objects and a Pop art use of common imagery.”
Daniel Douke’s painting “Suspect” is both breathtaking and torturing. The orange custard flower seems to grow bigger with each second until viewers realizes they’re actually moving toward it.
“Painting can be a kind of miracle because it is a total unnatural act of making a three-dimension object on two-dimensional paper,” Thiebaud said. “It is a process and sometimes you are amused by things turning out the way they do. My restaurant-themed paintings come from experiences of working in restaurants, so in some sense most of my paintings are kind of like a diary of growing up.”
Sweet Tooth continues to display treats through Dec. 31, Tuesdays and Fridays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 251 Post street suite 425 between Grant and Stockton. Admission is free.
