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Viewers have much to digest, literally, at "Eating the Universe.Food in Art." Almost two floors are dedicated to the history and legacyof Eat Art, the term coined by Daniel Spoerri,a central figure in postwar European art, to describe mixed-media andmultimedia pieces created out of comestibles and speaking to theartistic, political, and cultural aspects of alimentation. The showincludes seminal works by Spoerri, dating to 1963, and by his Eat ArtGallery, from 1970, as well as pieces by 40 other artists, such as Joseph Beuys, Gordon Matta-Clark, and Dieter Roth. The exhibition’s premise and individual pieces are outstanding. Unfortunately, it isn’t clearly organized.

The first three installations are located in the lobby withoutexplanation or evident logic. Spoerri’s wall-mounted "snare-pictures" —assemblages of objects found on horizontal surfaces in random positionsand fixed in vertical displays — including his Tableau-piége 19.Oktober 1972, a tabletop laid with crockery, leftovers, and diversematerials, are positioned next to contemporary works like ZegerReyers’s Rotating Kitchen, 2009, a life-size model of a modern kitchenthat, turning slowly through 360 degrees and spilling its contents ontothe floor, represents the cultural weight of this locus of foodpreparation. Jana Sterbak’s Bread Bed, 2006, a twin-size iron bed frame with a mattress made of the eponymous edible, and Mika Rottenbergsseven-minute video installation Dough, 2006, in which three women passdough among themselves in a grotesque, claustrophobic assembly line,both address how globalization and industrialization have affectedprivate and domestic spaces. The exhibition offers an exquisite buffetbut not a cohesive meal.

"Eating the Universe" originally appeared in the May 2010 issue of Modern Painters. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Modern Painters' May 2010 Table of Contents.