Marcia Grostein

MARCIA GROSTEIN PHOTOGRAPH IN
THE FOOD SHOW AT THE CHELSEA ART MUSEUM
November 16 - February 24, 2007
NEW YORK – Lunch, a provocative photograph by Marcia Grostein is featured
in The Food Show: The Hungry Eye, an exhibition at the Chelsea Art Museum, from
November 16 - February 24. The exhibition of work by fifty-one artists is curated by
Robert G. Edelman and Gina Fiore. Grostein’s striking image embodies the major focus of
The Food Show: how eating tells us both about our private lives and the life of global
society. Like many of the artists in the show, Grostein uses wit and irony to take an
unexpected look at the pleasures and perils of food.
In Grostein’s photograph, we see a messy table at the end of a restaurant meal,
with left-over fries, a ketchup squeeze bottle, and glasses drained of wine. Incongruously,
above the clutter lies a sleeping baby, backed by bright blocks of color. Finally we notice
at the far edges of the picture, two, adult, male hands, one brown and one white. The
effect of the image is a kind of astonishment at the serendipity of the everyday world to
create this tableau, juxtaposing the chaotic social scene and serene infanthood.
Grostein’s Lunch combines spontaneity, art, and artifice–the impromptu
discovery of an image, enhanced by the digital painting-in of the colored blocks, with an
eye toward eating’s social dimension. There is an undeniable humor in Grostein’s picture,
along with an even more complex ambiguity. The image is an ironic take on the diametric
pulls of greasy indulgence and parental responsibility. And in the two hands at the table’s
far ends, there is an intimation of the need for shared caring, both in a family and in the
world at large.
Marcia Grostein is currently working on a large-scale video project, based on
popular Christmas lighting. The project’s installation will use projection on multiple
screens.
The Food Show is a wide-ranging look at food as a pervasive presence in our lives.
For better or worse, food is something we all need, crave, occasionally try to do without
and fear, sometimes all at once. This exhibition focuses on a preoccupation with food as
image and idea in contemporary culture. Going beyond the notion of the traditional still
life, as redefined by Cézanne, after centuries of a rich history of imagery and iconography
that goes back to cave painting, Egyptian and Roman art, contemporary artists have again
taken on the complex relationship of human society with that which is ingested and
imbibed.
Taking into account the complexity of the globalization of what constitutes a
meal, through the continuing controversy about additives, processed food and hormone
treated livestock and fertilizers in produce, artists have attempted to interpret and
translate these often controversial and life altering events in the treatment and distribution
of food in a world society. Dealing with these complex issues with humor and irony, as
well as integrating the subject of food as commerce and pleasure into the themes of
contemporary art and culture, these artists are commenting on how we view our lives as
well as our diets.