“The universe exists only for the purpose of life, and all that lives feeds itself.” Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

Everything revolves around food. Camaioni is one of those artists who work with anomalous materials. In his case this means cooking ingredients, food products which are subjected to a long preparation and in the end become landscapes, sculptures, small objects destined to disappear, but which the artist captures in sharp and bold images. An operation that combines creativity and knowing craftsmanship in its treatment of an ill-defined material like food. Camaioni kneads, cuts, decorates, cooks and melts: a process that culminates in the aesthetic transposition of two dimensions, a framework inside of which a job otherwise destined to extinguish and consume itself is fixed and projected. In passing from the kitchen to the artist’s studio the work undergoes a series of natural transformations that render immaterial that which by nature has consistency. The food, prepared and photographed, becomes a digital archive of images, which find further meaning in Camaioni’s visual projects, which produce surreal and metaphysical scenarios.

Since the time of Brillat-Savarin, who wrote a quite thorough “Physiology of taste”, things have evolved a great deal. Not that food has lacked an aesthetic quality, especially in France, but even a man so completely dedicated to the exaltation of taste like Brillat-Savarin, could never have imagined that cooking ingredients could be transformed into works of art!

Gloria Gradassi

See the Planet Food project

Comments are closed.