Eat Me

I recently went to an art opening at Frey Norris Gallery. The exhibit is called "Eat Me" and it features a bunch of artists focusing on consumption by examining advertising, food, sex and politics. American consumerism (and consumption in general) is a topic that fascinates me, but to see it examined in artwork is so perfectly ironic. It's the bombarding of images daily, almost every minute, that have seduced us into this mess, so can they wake us from the nightmare?

Most of the artists featured had incredibly interesting work displaying the good and bad of our binge eating, drinking, sexual needs, car lifestyles, need for religion and search for happiness. My favorite artwork there was by Susannah Bettag.



In Susannah Bettag's painting called "Super Yummy," you can see the outline of a woman um...orally pleasing...another woman. In the foreground there's an intricate pile of appliances, fridges and kettles, strainers, pools and other symbols of traditional female domesticity. Though, she claims her work is not political feminist critique, it's hard not to think so when you see the juxtaposition of a giant slab of marbled meat, a pile of kitchen items and a porn scene depicting lesbian sex. It’s almost the exact formula for the American male wet dream.

In Susannah’s words:

“The intricate details echo the chaos of internal musings, and in their complexity and obsessiveness reference the high level of detail and craft of traditional women's art (the sampler, the quilt, the needlepoint). Behind this chaos are large scale close-ups of women, women entwined and unclothed, women drawn from the male gaze of pornography. These are scattered with intricate and delicate symbols - swarms of vulva-like shapes, headless snakes, blood cells, flowers, and meat."

In any case, these paintings are decidedly colorful and fun to look at. You have to laugh when you find yourself focusing on a pile of thousands of tiny cupcakes spilling from a fridge and disregard the masturbation image in the same painting. The paintings are all very detailed and layered and very playful, some have an innocent little 70s character peeking through the sex scenes with a stoic expression. Hey Precious Moments kid, what are you doing in there!?!? Naughty! She aims for the awkward giggle.

Bettag's painted a series of lunch bags that match in style her full size canvases, each one painted with a graphic image and a phrase or two like, "Inside, thoughts of sex, thoughts of shopping to be done." At the end of the night, they raffled off 30 of the lunch bags and UncleWendy went home with a prize. Eat me!