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I LOVE CAULK FROSTING
"I Love Big Tan Caulk"
aka
"Swiss Hazelnut Sweetness Delight"
2010
low-relief: silicon caulk on 100% cotton
120 x 120 x 6.3 cm
47-1/4 x 47-1/4 x 2.5 in.
made in: Solothurn, Switzerland (CH)
Detail Nº 1
brezelen/pretzels, pine trees, and squirrels
Detail Nº 2
mushroom
Detail Nº 3
pine tree
Detail Nº 4
squirrel with exploding head and droppings
"I Love Big Brown Caulk"
aka
"Swiss Milk Chocolate Delight"
2010
low-relief: acrylic caulk on 100% cotton
120 x 120 x 6.3 cm
47-1/4 x 47-1/4 x 2.5 in.
made in: Solothurn, Switzerland (CH)
Detail Nº 5
brezelen/pretzels, pine trees, and squirrels
Detail Nº 6
mushroom
Detail Nº 7
squirrel with droppings
Detail Nº 8
squirrel with exploding head
"I Love Big Black Caulk"
aka
"Swiss Dark Chocolate Delight"
2010
low-relief: acrylic caulk on 100% cotton
120 x 120 x 6.3 cm
47-1/4 x 47-1/4 x 2.5 in.
made in: Solothurn, Switzerland (CH)
Detail Nº 9
brezelen/pretzels with pine trees and squirrels
Detail Nº 10
brezel/pretzel
Detail Nº 11
squirrel with droppings
Detail Nº 12
squirrel with exploding head and droppings
"I Love Average White Caulk"
aka
"Dinner Plates with Dinner"
2010
triptych: silicon caulk on 100% cotton
180 x 120 cm
47-1/4 x 70-13/16 in.
made in: Solothurn, Switzerland (CH)
Detail Nº 13
mushrooms, cowheads interchanged with the horned Krampus,
and dinner pltes interchanged with skulls
Detail Nº 14
mushroom
Detail Nº 15
horned krampus
Detail Nº 16
cowheads and mushrooms
Detail Nº 17
skulls with plate settings, cowheads, and mushrooms
"I Love Extra Big White Caulk"
aka
"Santa Claus, Schmutzli, and Pan"
or
"An Ode to Robert Rauschenberg's White Painting"
2010
triptych: silicon caulk on 100% cotton
270 x 180 cm
106-1/4 x 70-13/16 in.
made in: Solothurn, Switzerland (CH)
Detail Nº 18
Saint Nicholas' staffs interchanged with butcher knives;
apples interchanged with cow bells;
horned Krampus heads interchanged with goat heads;
apples interchanged with Mickey Mouse heads;
and crosses interchanged with gingerbread men
Detail Nº 19
gingerbread man
Detail Nº 20
Capricorn
Detail Nº 21
goat head
"I Love Small White Caulk"
aka
"Sheep, Pigs, and Girlies
2010
triptych: silicon caulk on 100% cotton
120 x 80 cm
47-1/7 x 31-1/2 in.
made in: Solothurn, Switzerland (CH)
Detail Nº 22
mudflap girls and sheep
Detail Nº 23
mudflap girl with long hair
Detail Nº 24
mudflap girl with afro
Detail Nº 25
female boar (with breasts)
Detail Nº 26
sheep
2010
triptych: acrylic caulk, latex paint, and gesson on 100% cotton
120 x 80 cm
47-1/4 x 31-1/2 in.
made in: Solothurn, Switzerland (CH)
Detail Nº 27
carriages, bows, teapots, wine grapes, champagne with flutes, poodles, and umbrellas
Detail Nº 28
carriage
Detail Nº 29
tea pot
Detail Nº 30
champagne with flutes
Detail Nº 31
umbrella
Detail Nº 32
poodle
"Die Experimente"
2010
silicon and acrylic caulk, latex paint, metal paint, rhinestones, and glitter on wood panels
17 x 17 cm (each)
6-11/16 x 6-11/16 in.
(top row, left to right):
"Chocolate Gilded Dreams"
"Winter Queen"
"Parisian Green"
(middle row, left to right):
"Porcelain Gilded Dremas"
"Winter on Swan Lake"
"Once You Go White, You Know You're Right; Once You Go Black, You Never Go Back"
(bottom row, left to right):
"White and Milk Chocolate Delight"
"Alpine Mint Chocolate Delight"
"Snow Queen"
made in: Solothurn, Switzerland (CH)
"I Love Caulk Frosting"
2010
digital film
2 min, 46 sec; color, sound
made in: Solothurn, Schweiz/Suisse/Svizzera/Switzerland
INITIAL CONCEPTUAL WORK BELOW:
"Octopussy"
2009
one (1) panel of a low-relief triptych: acrylic caulk, glitter, faux perals, and satin ribbon
60 x 60 cm
23-5/8 x 23-5/8 in.
made in: Berlin, Germany (DE)
"Octopussy" Detail Nº 33 - front view
octopuses with pearl eyes
"I LOVE CAULK FROSTING"
“As in all petit-bourgeois art, the irrepressible tendency towards extreme realism is countered ... by one of the eternal imperatives of journalism for women’s magazines ... But here, inventiveness, confined to a fairy-land reality, must be applied only to garnishings, for the genteel tendency ... precludes it from touching on the real problems concerning food (the real problem is not to have the idea of sticking cherries into a partridge, it is to have the partridge ... to pay for it).
This ornamental cookery is indeed supported by wholly mythical economics ... an openly dream- like cookery ... a cuisine of advertisement, totally magical, especially when one remembers that this magazine is widely read in small-income groups ... it is very careful not to take for granted that cooking must be economical.”^76
___
76. Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. New York: The Noonday Press, 1975. Print. p. 79.
QUOTES/NOTES:
ORNAMENTAL COOKERY
4.1.1: COATINGS AND ALIBIS TO DISGUISE BRUTALITY
“The ‘substantial’ category which prevails in this type of cooking is that of the smooth coating: there is an obvious endeavor to glaze surfaces, to round them off, to bury the food under the even sediment of sauces, creams, icings and jellies ... Hence a cookery which is based on coatings and alibis, and is for ever trying to extenuate and even disguise the primary nature of foodstuffs, the brutality of meat or the abruptness of sea- food.”^81
4.1.2: GENTEEL COOKERY IN COATINGS
“But, above all, coatings prepare and support one of the major developments of genteel cookery: ornamentation. Glazing, in Elle, serves as a background for unbridled beautification: chiseled mushrooms, punctuation of cherries, motifs of carved lemon, shavings of truffle, silver pastilles, arabesque of glacé fruit: the underlying coat (and this is why I call it a sediment, since the food itself becomes no more than an indeterminate bed-rock) is intended to be the page on which can be read a whole rococo cookery (there is a partiality for a pinkish colour) [sic].”^82
4.1.3: TWO CONTRADICTORY WAYS OF ORNAMENTAL COOKERY
Ornamentation proceeds in two contradictory ways ... on the one hand, feeling from nature thanks to a kind of frenzied baroque (sticking shrimps in a lemon, making a chicken look pink, serving grapefruit hot), and on the other, trying to reconstitute it through an incongruous artifice (strewing meringue mushrooms and holly leaves on a traditional log- shaped Christmas cake, replacing the heads of crayfish around the sophisticated bechamel which hides their bodies).”^83
___
81. Ibid., p. 78
82. Ibid., p. 78.
83. Ibid., p.79.