Menu
The New Contemporary Art Magazine

Theo Mercier’s Uncomfortable Sculptures, Photos Play With Food

Theo Mercier is a young, French artist currently based in Mexico City. Working primarily in sculpture and photography, he often inventively incorporates found objects into his work. He arranges commonplace items in ways that can be grotesque or sexual, playing with the tension between alluring colors and textures and off-putting content.

Theo Mercier is a young, French artist currently based in Mexico City. Working primarily in sculpture and photography, he often inventively incorporates found objects into his work. He arranges commonplace items in ways that can be grotesque or sexual, playing with the tension between alluring colors and textures and off-putting content.

His 2010 sculpture The Loner exemplifies this push-and-pull quality. Mercier’s large, squishy figure with googly eyes is made entirely of spaghetti. Once one gets past the sculpture’s cuteness, it’s impossible not to think about the logistical nightmare of keeping that thing preserved. Images of spaghetti left too long in the tupperware container start flooding one’s memory. In other pieces, Mercier submerges lunch meats and fake body parts in water at the beach or plants sex toys in still lifes. Across the board, he plays with viewers’ expectations and one can picture him laughing from behind the camera. Currently, Mercier has an exhibition on view at Arte Valori in Milan and is an artist-in-residence at Casa Maauad in Mexico City.


Collaboration with Thomas James


Collaboration with Thomas James


Collaboration with Thomas James

Meta
Share
Facebook
Reddit
Pinterest
Email
Related Articles
Bovey Lee, a Hong Kong-born, Los Angeles-based artist, uses cut paper to create miniature worlds. These intricate cityscapes and forms, made from Chinese rice paper on silk, contain differing scenes at every corner, allowing new viewing experiences at each distance observed. Often, works like “The Tightrope Walker” feature only one, tiny portion of the work directly reflecting the name of the title, while a busy world surrounds it.
Recycling packaging materials and other discardables, photographer Suzanne Jongmans crafts Renaissance-style portraits that examine contemporary consumption. The artist finds value in these otherwise overlooked materials; elsewhere, she piles clothes and finds beauty in unfinished garments.
Rainbow-colored mannequin legs, animal bones, skulls, and gold- these are just a few of the materials used in John Breed's eclectic installations. If his choice of medium sounds frenzied, it might stem from his creative background. Now based in the Netherlands, Breed received training from a calligraphy master in Kyoto, Japan, before he moved to New York to take on graffiti, paint frescos in Rome, and study landscape painting in China. A world traveler and natural born experimenter, every piece that Breed creates is a culmination of his extensive skill set.
Haroshi's figures, made from used skateboard decks, appear to be getting massive in size. But in fact, the gallery holding them is miniature. The 20-inch sculptures are part of the new Arsham/Fieg Gallery's first show at the Kith Manhattan flagship store. Alongside his figures are what appear to be 3D-printed versions of the gallery’s namesakes, artists Daniel Arsham and Ronnie Fieg.

Subscribe to the Hi-Fructose Mailing List