Showing posts with label Justin Richel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Justin Richel. Show all posts

Friday, February 18, 2011

Justin Richel's "Sweets"

Hannah introduced me to Justin Richel's gouche paintings tonight as we both use cakes as subject matter. I love the intricate details and the piles and piles of towering pastries. Any artist that manages to combine cakes and a globe in mass quantities requires an instantaneous blog post.


Justin Richel, Tower, 2008

From his website:
"In the midst of an entirely barren and empty "landscape", void of anything other than a multitude of sugar coated inhabitants. The many shapes and sizes, parts and pieces of a greater whole come together to construct towering mountains, pillars of sugary strength and the destructive forces of confectionery whirlwinds and tsunamis. A flawed yet functional infrastructure, A conglomerate society of multi-colored temptations, vying for the same hierarchical position at the top of the heap.

These paintings represent our relationship with one another in a society in which success is measured largely by one’s ability to consume. The “sweets” are representative and are essentially a replacement or stand-in for the “figure”. I attempt to portray the fragility and precariousness of our situation through these works."


Precarious, 2008


Globe, 2009


Globe, (Detail), 2009

Justin has an etsy shop where I also discovered his fondness for birds! I can't believe Hannah withheld this information/artist for so long.


Love Birds (Stack)