DINING ROOM PICTURES
2020
Carnation Contemporary
Portland, OR
2020
Carnation Contemporary
Portland, OR
Dining Room Pictures serves as a contemporary nod to the fruit, flowers, and consumables depicted in 19th-century American dining room pictures – small, decorative still-life paintings designed for display in the dining room, symbolizing the host's hospitality. The photographs in this exhibition draw inspiration from Western still-life traditions, exploring themes of decay and consumption through a post-internet perspective.
Within the picture plane, the exhibition plays with the boundaries between the natural and artificial, and the real and simulacrum. It navigates the liminal spaces that exist between artifice and truth, imagination and reality, and mimesis and origin. Artificial flower arrangements, decomposing fruit, and kitsch objects are juxtaposed with concealed fragments from 20th-century beauty advertisements. The resulting body of work offers a poetic disruption of the traditional dining room picture, inviting viewers to question and contemplate the evolving intersections of art, reality, and representation.
Within the picture plane, the exhibition plays with the boundaries between the natural and artificial, and the real and simulacrum. It navigates the liminal spaces that exist between artifice and truth, imagination and reality, and mimesis and origin. Artificial flower arrangements, decomposing fruit, and kitsch objects are juxtaposed with concealed fragments from 20th-century beauty advertisements. The resulting body of work offers a poetic disruption of the traditional dining room picture, inviting viewers to question and contemplate the evolving intersections of art, reality, and representation.
Photo documentation by Mario Gallucci