peter anton chocolate art sculpture

Giantism in art, if not in life, is almost always appealing. If achieved expertly it can be seductive and enchanting. Super size enchants because it plays with basic natural laws. If normal dimensions can be disregarded, our own place in the universe is a mutable condition, too. Peter Anton possesses the talent plus the necessary wit to work on this scale. He is also a superb artisan.( If he were a painter instead of a sculptor his skillfulness would ally him with Photo Realism) Although we're never fooled into thinking anything in Anton's plaster inventory is real, the way his confections brush against reality causes a frisson. Anton's objects are startling realistic down to the last detail: the sugar crystals that coat outsized gum drops seem so right that if we haven't yet surrendered to Anton's vision, a spell of anxiety might precede the enchantment.

A meticulous attention to detail distinguishes Anton from the most celebrated practitioner of Giantism, Claes Oldenburg. Oldenburg has of course been at it longer, and he has tackled a wider range of subjects than Anton, and his debut work in plaster-also sculptures of food--was deliberately messy and off-putting before its charm started to work. Anton's addition of refinement to the ability to startle is his great contribution to the genre of the humongous.

Anton knows that if he is going to make hedonic food over and over, to evoke sheer pleasure and luxury always in the same way isn't enough: he has to ring enough changes to keep everybody interested. And smartly he has expanded his candy vision to include some that speak to the kid in us: licorice whips, jawbreakers and gummy fish.

But Anton's chocolate boxes are his richest and most sustained work. The very notion of a heterogeneous sampler box gives him license to play within the confines of the grid box. The chocolates veer into decadence. They embody an inherently dark vision, and in some pieces Anton exploits this by making pieces that look ravaged is if they had been bitten into and abandoned in their compromised condition. Some of the grid box contains squares that jar the viewer because they are empty, save for the pleated paper.

Because nuances are one of Anton's strong points, the chocolate boxes often approach being narratives, but to read morality or politics into the maneuvers within the grid, would be to upset the balance Anton has achieved between edginess and indulgence. It would be well to remember that paintings from the rococo period--some works by Watteau come to mind--can, despite their embodiment of rapture, contain subtle warnings of destruction.

Anton has departed from the deliriousness of candy and captured still exaggeratedly--the radiant healthiness of fruit and vegetables. These sculptures are free-standing, and the sliced-open citrus fruits, watermelons, cucumbers and peppers with their exposed, almost symmetrical arrangements of seeds can be hypnotic. They can attract and hold us the way mandalas can.

Peter Anton literally subscribes to the idea that art is an escape from the everyday. To underscore that point he has posed with his work scintillatingly as a dandy in florid 18th century dress, and forbiddingly, as a priest of some unknown cult, adorned with a giant amulet. His art isn't dependent on such external theatrics, but the costumes are a fillip reminding us that supple change is at the heart of his artistic vision.