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The table is set! Vera Mercer and Daniel Spoerri
The table is set! Vera Mercer and Daniel Spoerri
February 20, 2019
Vera Mercer, Double, Paris 2010 © Vera Mercer
Culinary delight and the staging of food and indulgence are the fundamental elements in Vera Mercer’s work. Born in Berlin in 1936, she currently lives between Omaha/Nebraska and Paris, and in recent years has time and again staged complex tableaux that redefine the ‘eat-art’ theme, causing a sensation in more that just the art market.
Mercer discovered the subject of markets, kitchens, food and art already back in the sixties, when taking pictures during nightly rambles at Les Halles marketplace in Paris, in the company of Jean Tinguely and Daniel Spoerri (born 1930), whom she married in 1958 and who is credited with founding Eat Art.
In recent years she has once again re-discovered the subject of culinary still-lifes: fruit and vegetables, fish and animal bones, as well as half-withered flowers, are brought together with diverse objects and arranged as absurdly surreal still-lifes with Baroque fullness and challengingly bright colours. Torn between vanity symbolism and a love of life, the large-format, staged images both fascinate and irritate the viewer. Mercer and Spoerri’s work remains on display at the Künstlerhaus Marktoberndorf up until May 19.
Further information at:
www.kuenstlerhaus-marktoberdorf.de
A portfolio covering this series appeared in LFI 5/2010.
Mercer discovered the subject of markets, kitchens, food and art already back in the sixties, when taking pictures during nightly rambles at Les Halles marketplace in Paris, in the company of Jean Tinguely and Daniel Spoerri (born 1930), whom she married in 1958 and who is credited with founding Eat Art.
In recent years she has once again re-discovered the subject of culinary still-lifes: fruit and vegetables, fish and animal bones, as well as half-withered flowers, are brought together with diverse objects and arranged as absurdly surreal still-lifes with Baroque fullness and challengingly bright colours. Torn between vanity symbolism and a love of life, the large-format, staged images both fascinate and irritate the viewer. Mercer and Spoerri’s work remains on display at the Künstlerhaus Marktoberndorf up until May 19.
Further information at:
www.kuenstlerhaus-marktoberdorf.de
A portfolio covering this series appeared in LFI 5/2010.
Vera Mercer, Double, Paris 2010 © Vera Mercer
Vera Mercer, Calf’s feet, Paris 2012, © Vera Mercer
Vera Mercer, Peaches and Apples, Paris 2014, © Vera Mercer
Portrait Vera Mercer, Old Market, Omaha 2015, © Fulvio de Pellegrin