PIZZA TIME! [Photograph: Marlborough Chelsea]
According to ARTnews, pizza is in the spotlight at the big-time Marlborough Gallery's new Broome Street space on the Lower East Side in NYC. 25 artworks are being featured in PIZZA TIME!, the first exhibit to be held in the space. The show opened September 8th and showcases pizza-inspired works from well-known artists of all stripes, including Willem de Kooning, John Baldessari, Jonah Freeman and Justone Lower, Oto Gillen, and Darren Bader.
Some works take classic artistic approaches and turn them on their heads—for example, Oto Gillen's exquisitely realized still life, depicting not grapes and goblets but a gooey pepperoni slice. Whether it's a surreal pizza flying carpet, a pizza piñata, or some other reimagining of the slice, all the work celebrates pizza for what it is: enduringly delicious and wonderfully iconic.
According to associate director and curator Vera Neykov, the pizza theme was chosen because "sharing a pizza is a metaphor for community and getting together", and so seemed a fitting spirit under which to launch their new space: something we here at Slice can get behind. If any of our readers happen to visit the gallery, let us know what you think of this pizza-centric show!
About the author:Kate Andersen is a Contributing Editor for Slice.