Exhibition: Off the Menu: Looking at Food

405 Rose Street Lexington
KY 40506-0241
finearts.uky.edu/art-museum/exhibitions/menu-looking-food

For centuries, artists have used food as a subject—from Dutch still lifes teeming with meats, fruits, and vegetables— to Andy Warhol’s infamous soup cans. This exhibition features work from the Museum’s permanent collection, as well as art borrowed from galleries and studios in Lexington and beyond, to reveal how food can be used to investigate notions of nourishment, ritual, desire, and popular culture.

There are images of healthy meals as well as guilty pleasures; and in several cases, there is a suggestive connection between what is being depicted and the art materials being used to do so. Jennifer Coates’s PBJ, Julia Jacquette’s A Constant Stream, and Lori Larusso’s Imminent Danger each use paint to conjure the expressive potential of food, be it peanut butter and jelly, salad dressings and sauces, or cake icing.

David Lucas, Breakfast, 1978, oil on canvas. Collection of the UK Art Museum, Purchase: Art Museum Funds.

Photographers Steve Aishman and Sally Davies both explore fast food in performative ways; one with anarchistic spirit in the moment, and the other with a forensic rigor over several years. Heartbreaking drawings by Sue Coe portray the suffering of animals and the draconian conditions of the slaughterhouse; and Louis Zoellar Bickett’s sneakers memorialize his years as a waiter at A La Lucie, a legendary local restaurant.

Kid’s Table is a special component of this exhibition, featuring food-focused works made by children, under the guidance of Jarah Jones at ARTplay Children’s Studio and Georgia Henkel at Sayre School.

Participating artists: Steve Aishman, Andrew Brinkhorst, Jennifer Coates, Sue Coe, Sally Davies, Joe Goode, Julia Jacquette, Lori Larusso, David Lucas, Lina Tharsing, Wayne Thiebaud, and others.

Lina Tharsing, New Symbols, 2019, oil on panel. Courtesy of the artist.