The Dinner Party 2015

For over two decades, Ferran Adriá chef at El Bulli (Roses, Catalonia, Spain), created some of the most extraordinary dishes in the world. Inspired by the digitalized slide show 1846 and a review by the art critic Roberta Smith (A Culinary Dalí, Delving Into Palettes, New York Times, February 13, 2014),* I thought it might be fun to echo the exuberant creativity of Ferran Adriá by creating a table setting with eight dishes composed of surplus electronic components.  The work was shown at an exhibit of works in progress as part of the MFA in Applied Craft + Design program in Portland, Oregon on December 11, 2015. Like Adria’s culinary creations, my work’s existence will be transitory; the photographs that you see here, the only evidence of its brief existence.

 

I think that I shall prepare something a little more palatable for Christmas dinner.

 

The Dinner Party 2015

 

Artist Statement:

Chefs are revered for their molecular gastronomical achievements and technological tour de force. Yet, to quote Anton Ego, the fictional food critic in Pixar’s 2007 computer-animated work Ratatouille,

After reading a lot of overheated puffery about your new cook, you know what I’m craving? A little perspective. That’s it. I’d like some fresh, clear, well-seasoned perspective.

My work seeks that perspective.

We are infiltrated, seduced and subjugated by the materials and devices of technology. The purest organic ingredients are laced with unseen traces of emitted synthetics and genetically altered substances.

My work, created from electronic components and contemporary polymers, makes visible this emergent world of cyborgian materials. Materials intimately and irreversibly integrated into our bodies, minds, and souls.

 

Place Setting; Culinary Resistance 

 

Place Setting; Culinary Capacitance

 

Place Setting;   Whose food?

 

* 1846 slide show: (http://www.nytimes.com/video/t-magazine/100000002673580/1846-by-ferran-adri.html).

Roberta Smith review: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/14/arts/design/ferran-adria-opens-at-the-drawing-center.html?_r=0)

Roberta Smith writes:  As these marvels glide past (in reference to the video 1846), much enlarged, they variously evoke jewelry, sculpture, architecture, landscape architecture, furniture, early Dalí paintings and so forth. Dazzling, unfamiliar and sometimes mouthwatering, they celebrate art in any form as a thrilling, open-ended but all-consuming endeavor.