Details

Provenance

Private collection, Switzerland, acquired directly from the artist.

Catalog summary

Will Cotton<br>Colour pigments on acrylic polymer, polystyrene and plaster. 2008. C. 76 x 51 x 51 cm. Signed, dated and titled on the underside.<br>Period: Zeitgenössische Kunst<br>Technique: Skulptur/Objekt/Multiple<br>• A work by the American artist that is absolutely typical of his hyperrealism • “Delicious” addresses central themes in the artist’s work, such as desire, temptation and a critique of consumerism • Cotton’s work has already been celebrated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in the USA and has also been exhibited in Europe, including at the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris What a sweet temptation! Sensual and seductive in equal measure, we are presented with a mountain of piled-up cakes, icing and cream. Who wouldn’t want to take a bite here – and that is precisely the point for the American artist Will Cotton. In his New York studio, he works on creating fantastical structures made of confectionery, such as gingerbread houses, sweets and mountains of cake. To this end, Cotton creates elaborate models of his artworks using real baked goods to draw visual inspiration. The result is a new, hyper-real visual language, kitsch and seductive; utopias that play on the viewer’s temptation. After all, every day we are confronted with hundreds, if not thousands, of images designed to awaken desires within us – this is how our consumer world works: igniting desire, seduction to the point of excess! Cotton draws not only on motifs from pop culture, but also on the idea of a land flowing with milk and honey, updating them for the modern age. In Saatchi Online Magazine in 2011, he explains: “The dream of paradise, of a land of plenty, runs like a thread through the overall history of humanity, not only in times of prosperity, but in fact very often in times of hardship as well.” In 2010, Cotton was the artistic director of Katy Perry’s music video “California Gurls” and designed the album cover for her third studio album “Teenage Dream”. His work has already been exhibited in many American museums, most recently at the Kunstraum Potsdam and the Louvre-Lens Museum in France; it is also part of the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Museum in Washington. Just last year, Will Cotton transformed the Rockefeller Centre in New York into a dreamscape where vast skies and iconic cowboy imagery blend with unicorns and towering cake sculptures.