Neither Bread nor Painting
4th February - 27th March 2004
This is the first public showing of Amikam Toren’s Neither
Bread nor Painting, a group of five tautological paintings
which have been made from the insides of loaves of bread. Having
been turned into a fine powder this material, employed as an unconventional
but effective pigment, was mixed with water to produce paint,
then applied to the canvas using both hands. With the canvases
flat on the floor the loaves’ crusty exteriors, now resembling
the surfaces of shiny ceramic vessels, were placed upon them and
one of these was accordingly decorated. Neither Bread nor Painting
was completed in 1996. In order to preserve the work it was coated
with acrylic medium and resin the following year.
Amikam Toren has exhibited widely, both internationally and in
the UK. His work was included in the influential survey exhibition
Live in Your Head: Concept and Experiment in Britain 1965-75
(Whitechapel Art Gallery, London 2000). Toren’s solo exhibition
Clouds in Trousers is currently showing at Imperial College,
London (29th January – 27th February)
as part of the programme Artlab 29.
