“Eat Me - The Animal Self” -2009

I desire to inhabit the space of our animal selves and invite others to join me.

The cotton candy is bait.  From blocks away, the sweet fragrance is evident.  As people enter the opening night, I greet them with huge pink fluffy wafts which they can eat, share and add to the piece.  Over the course of the opening the piece grows in thickness, but the inevitable temporality of all is proven as through the course of the month-long exhibition the wispy candy condenses into a hard, deep red mass.

Most associate this treat with childhood sentimentality.  The innocence found in this material relates to our innocence, our infant-selves, our personal edens before becoming adult.

Inherent in my various works involving food is the notion of communing.  In this piece, the idea is closer to the Christian practice of communion.  A cast of my face with an orange slice in the mouth is the head of this gorilla.  The food I am handing out is of the same matter as the flesh of the creature who bears my features.  The audience leaves the gallery with part of my work inside their bodies.  They are effected on a physiological, chemical level.