Gendy AlimurungJustin Richel paints stacks of things. Stacks of birds, stacks of deer antlers, stacks of mushrooms, and, my favorite, stacks of desserts. He says that he is interested in how far he can push things until the stack collapses, and that stacks for him are about balance. They “allude to the fragility of circumstance.” He believes that “the stack can only exist so long as all of its pieces are cooperating together.” Hmmm. I'd always thought that stacks are about a lack of cooperation. That they're about chaos. But maybe I've just been watching too many episodes of Hoarders.
Anyway, Richel has a little interview over at Little Paper Planes. The interviewer asked him where the imagery for his dessert paintings comes from and what inspired his devotion to them, and Richel said:
“I choose sweets because they are very unassuming. On the surface they are very attractive and make friends easily but if you really look at a cupcake (for instance) you will see that it is wearing a mask. It is loaded with calories and trans fats and does not have its' hosts best interests in mind, it clearly has its own agenda.”
See? Cupcakes are evil.
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