Enhanced Varieties: Seduction in the Land of Plenty

After months of translating images into industrial food landscapes, we developed a growing intimacy with Carleton Watkins' work.  His 1889 Lake George Cling Peaches photograph, in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art and Huntington Library, appeared in a dream to Barbara in all the colors of the rainbow. This was the birth and inspiration for Enhanced Varieties.

Enhanced Varieties: Seduction in the Land of Plenty 

Enhanced Varieties is a suite of Jell-O® -toned silver gelatin prints reproducing Carleton Watkins’ 1889 photograph, Lake George Cling Peaches.

In the 1880s, land barons began advertising to easterners, encouraging them to invest and settle southern Californian. Carleton Watkins, renown for capturing the sublime in nature, was hired to depict the irresistible economic opportunities of the region. Despite a desert climate heavily dependent on irrigation, Kern County, California, was marketed as a land of inexhaustible agricultural potential. Watkins’ photograph of a crate of peaches is most emblematic, illustrating lushness beyond measure while overlooking the true costs of cultivation where water is scarce.

We all know the success of this characteristically American marketing scheme. With the help of agricultural technology, farmers flocked to this region to grow a new reality — America’s fruit basket. Today we have come to expect limitless plenty and limitless choices. We offer you Watkins’ Peaches as an icon of the triumph of the technological improvement of nature, engineered and marketed to keep us expecting more. 

Appropriating this iconic image, we chose to tone silver gelatin copy prints in twenty of the most popular Jell-O flavors our current technology is capable of seducing us with:

Berry Blue       
Grape  
Lemon          
Island Pineapple       
Cherry 
Orange  
Peach               
Black Cherry  
Mango    
Cranberry  
Rasberry 
Strawberry  
Fruit Punch  
StrawberryBanana 
Lime  
Cranberry            
Apricot    
Cherry Lemonade     
Blackberry Fusion    
Tropical Fusion

Artists Ponder Food: Song Dong

Beijing-based artist Song Dong (b. 1966) explores notions of impermanence and the transience of human endeavor. 

Waste Not

"Finally, in 2005, Mr. Song proposed that they turn the accumulated junk into an art project. In this way, he argued, nothing would be discarded and lost; everything would be meaningfully recycled and preserved. His mother agreed to this and they emptied the premises. Then, in an exhibition space in Beijing, they sorted its contents into the kinds of meticulous piles and groupings seen at MoMA: stacks of neatly folded shirts, clusters of bottles and cans, groupings of stuffed animals and so forth, arranged in and around a dismantled section of the original wood house. As a finishing touch, Mr. Song created a neon sign reading, 'Dad, don't worry, Mum and we are fine,' and hung it over the installation." Credit: Todd Heisler/The New York Times

Artists Ponder Food: Juergen Tellers

For the cookbook Eating at Hotel Il Pellicano, Teller photographed the creations dreamt up in the retreat’s kitchen by chef Antonio Guida, who won the restaurant two Michelin stars during his time there.

Food No.15, Hotel Il Pellicano 2010

Food No.113, Hotel Il Pellicano 2010

Captured in Teller’s recognizably edgy and impish aesthetic, Guida’s recipes emerge as whimsical fantasies bordering precariously on the hedonistic, meticulously crafted artworks to be consumed in the passion of a moment, to be vanished but unforgotten.

Food No.102, Hotel Il Pellicano 2010

Food No.18, Hotel Il Pellicano 2010

Artists Ponder Food: Jennifer Rubell

Jennifer Rubell creates participatory artwork that is a hybrid of performance art, installation, sculpture, and happenings. The pieces are often staggering in scale and sensually arresting, employing a wide range of media, both durable and ephemeral.

Old Fashioned (2010)

The title, Old-Fashioned, both identifies the variety of donut hanging on the wall (the most basic and elemental in Dunkin’ Donuts’ lineup), and raises the question of what "old-fashioned" might mean in a contemporary-art context. As viewers enter the courtyard, they are faced with an 8-foot by 60-foot freestanding wall. The front of the wall is pristine, with 1,521 donuts hung in a grid formation at perfect 6-inch intervals.

LensCulture Earth15 Awards

We are honored to be a finalist in the LensCulture Earth15 Awards among such fine work. "The level of thoughtful approaches to communicating very complex ideas about conservation, climate change and the impact of human consumption on this planet was extremely impressive—not to mention the simple stunning beauty of many of the images.” —Molly Roberts, juror

— Molly Roberts, Juror

Expo2015 Milano: Feeding the Planet

We only wished this had come true as part of Expo2015, an international expo about food in Milan. We received a proposal from Positivo Diretto, an exhibition firm in Lecce, Italy, who wanted to use our images as 2.5m high totems to line the route through Lecce, the city hosting the delegates of Expo2015 in May. Unfortunately, they could not get needed permissions so we had to content ourselves with a feature on the Feed a Different Imagination Expo campaign site. Hoping for Expo2020 in Dubai!

Tiny Tiny Group Show

The Cola Sea from Processed Views was included in Tiny Tiny Group Show's UNREAL.  Thanks Kevin Miyazaki!

Exhibition - Martine Chaisson Gallery

Exhibition  - Processed Views   Martine Chaisson Gallery 72 Camp Street New Orleans, Louisiana  December 5, 2015 – January  30, 2016 Gallery Talk  December 11th    4:30pm Artists' Walk Through as part of PHOTONOLA programming introducing 44" Fruit Loops Landscape and Enhanced Varieties, Jello-toned silver prints and Sugar Geology sculpture We exhibited this new series at Martine Chaisson Gallery. Enhanced Varieties is a suite of Jell-O®-toned silver gelatin prints  reproducing Carleton Watkins’ 1889 photograph,   Lake George Cling Peaches. Land barons began advertising in the 1880s, encouraging easterners to invest and settle in southern California. Carleton Watkins, renowned for capturing the sublime in nature, was hired to depict the irresistible economic opportunities  of the region. Despite a desert climate heavily dependent on irrigation, southern California was marketed as a land of inexhaustible agricultural potential.  Watkins’ photograph of a crate of peaches illustrates lushness beyond measure  while overlooking the true costs of cultivation where water is scarce.  We all know the success of this characteristically American marketing scheme.  Farmers flocked to this region and with the help of agricultural technology,  grew a new reality – America’s fruit basket. Today we have come to expect limitless plenty and limitless choices. We offer you this selection of Peaches  as an icon of technology improving nature, engineered and marketed to keep  us expecting more.  Sugar Geology: Sedimentary, Igneous and Metamorphic  PHOTONOLA highlights Over the Moon at PHOTONOLA