Jennifer Rubell gets a New York Magazine profile by Kera Bolonik that makes a strong case for her work as conceptual artist who uses food (primarily) as her medium
Rubell was now being called a food artist. Her whimsical, sometimes disturbing, and always spectacular events at museums and art fairs around the country matched perfectly with the lavish, self-reflective hobnobbing spirit of the contemporary-art world. They also commented on the art itself, tweaking and reveling in its consumability. Last year, she produced a dinner for the Brooklyn Museum’s annual benefit. The theme, “Icons,” allowed Rubell to honor her favorite artists: a giant piñata of Andy Warhol’s head decorated the lobby; a table arranged with 150 roasted rabbits evoked Joseph Beuys’s performance piece How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare; “drinking paintings”—blank stretched canvases, each with a tank in back and a spigot in front dispensing dirty martinis, bourbon, gin-and-tonics, white wine, rum-and-Cokes, screwdrivers—were hung on the walls, referencing Jackson Pollock’s “drip” paintings.
The drinking paintings were a personal breakthrough because Rubell was moving away from food and more clearly establishing her artistic objective. Interaction, she explains, is her medium; food had been the means to engage. “I’m interested in making art that people want to see and can use to understand what’s happening inside contemporary art. The minute you give people something they can participate with, it gives them access to it, because they’re a part of it.” The drinking paintings solved another problem: Rubell had found a way to “create durable objects that contained the ongoing possibility of interaction.”
It’s OK to Eat the Art (New York)
