Artist Peter Anton’s boxes of chocolates look good enough to eat, but you’d better not. The heart-shaped and rectangular boxes of confectionary treats are actually oversized mixed media sculptures. While you may find yourself salivating at the pieces, they are meant to digest with the eyes, not the stomach.
Peter Anton’s Valentine Chocolates
Presently on exhibit at New York’s UNIX Gallery is Peter Anton’s I LOVE YOU, a visual affirmation of the connection between art and our emotional needs and desires.
“The gallery will be enveloped and embraced by a red, velvety cocoon of love and fanciful candies,” says Anton, whose larger-than-life, mixed-media sculptures of delectable sweets and savory foods will be displayed at various installations throughout the gallery. “It will have the [luscious] feeling of a French boudoir.” Admirers can engage in the heightened pleasures and sensual awareness of the artist’s sumptuous creations.
Although I LOVE YOU includes Anton’s monumental-sized, hyper-realistic boxes of donuts, cakes, frozen treats, and other tempting “edibles”, it’s his boxes of chocolates which I am sharing with you in light of the fact that today is Valentine’s Day.
The sculptures are crafted from carefully selected, manipulated materials, including resin, metal, wood, clay, and acrylic and oil paints. “With heightened color and exaggerated forms, my work promises the unattainable in life: ultimate satisfaction,” says Anton. “Food evokes a sense of well-being and is an important part of the special memories in our lives. I like to create art that can lure, charm, tease, disarm, and surprise. The sensual nature of the works stirs desire, passion, obsession, and indulgence. I activate the hunger people have for the things that give them pleasure.” Anton explores ways to activate the hunger the public has for pleasurable things and forces them to surrender to an innate, universal reverence for that which we consume.
PETER ANTON
I Love You
Unix Gallery
1015 Madison Ave
New York, NY
February 4 – March 9, 2016
About (from his website):
Peter Anton’s work has been extensively exhibited in solo shows throughout the world, including the Allan Stone Gallery, Hammer Galleries, Bruce R. Lewin Gallery, and Unix Gallery in New York City; Urban Art in Seoul; Guy Pieters Gallery in Belgium; Gallery Delaive in Amsterdam; Rarity Gallery in Mykonos; Scott Richards Contemporary Art in San Francisco; Gallery Valentine in East Hampton; and Arcature Fine Art in Palm Beach.
Mr. Anton has exhibited in numerous museums, including a solo exhibition at the Netherlands’ Museum Jan van der Togt in Amstelveen. As well, Anton has participated in group exhibitions at the Museum Villa Rot in Burgrieden-Rot, Germany; the Austin Museum of Art in Texas; the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, New York; the Fresno Metropolitan Art Museum; the Nicolaysen Art Museum in Casper, Wyoming; the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut; the Castellani Art Museum in Niagara, New York; the COPIA Museum in Napa Valley, California; the William Benton Museum in Storrs, Connecticut; the Schloss Gottorf Museum in Schleswig, Germany; the Museum Ritter in Waldenbuch, Germany; the Strathmore Museum in Bethesda, Maryland; the Schloss Neuenburg Museum in Neuenburg, Germany; the Wilhelm Hack Museum in Ludwigshafen, Germany; the Staatliche Kunsthalle in Karlsruhe, Germany; the Woodson Art Museum in Wausau, Wisconsin; the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Missouri; the Historic City Hall Arts & Cultural Center in Lake Charles, Louisiana; the Copelouzos Art Museum in Athens; and the Madden Museum of Art in Denver, Colorado.
His work has been extensively exhibited at leading art fairs in the United States, Europe and Asia.
Peter Anton’s work is widely collected and is featured in several prestigious private, corporate, and museum collections including Steven A. Cohen; the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art; Sir Howard Stringer; Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones; the Jordanian Royal Family; architect Lord Norman Foster; Oppenheim Bank; the Copelouzos Art Museum in Athens; The Blackstone Resort Hotel in Korea; Breitling Watches; Raymond James Financial; Perfetti Van Melle; the Portland Museum of Art; The Dennis Hopper Collection; Susanne & Wolfgang Porsche; Siemens AG; NIKE; and President Bill Clinton.
Anton is also known for his 2012 Art Basel Miami installation SUGAR & GOMORRAH. The interactive sculpture was the world’s first art installation where the viewer rode through an exhibition aboard an amusement ride. The immersive exhibition took visitors on an actual roller coaster ride winding and snaking through a destructed city with tumbling pillars, fire, and skeletons juxtaposed with larger-than-life sculptures of sugary treats and nearly nude live models.
Peter Anton
all images courtesy of the artist and UNIX Gallery
