About The Work
For his series Quotidien Pain, Crossley purchased two baker’s trolleys to make, store, and frame paintings. Each trolley has gastro-norm slots intended for trays, which have been replaced by canvases prepared to appear as smooth as the trolley’s steel. While often a frame responds to a painting, these paintings respond to this unusual frame. Bread or croissants seemed too literal as subjects, so this flour was replaced with flowers arranged between the tradition of vanitas and innocuous, ‘flowery’ painting. Each set of racks now serves up a cycle of 15 selected flower species, which seem to melt into the lustrous canvas, fusing the illusion of foreground and background into an indivisible material, an alloy like the steel itself loaded with flowers that neither grow nor die. The shapes and forms of the flowers painted for this work have been selected from François Couplan’s fieldbook Encyclopédie des plantes sauvages comestibles et toxiques de l'Europe (Encyclopedia of edible and poisonous wild plants of Europe). Each is painted with pigments composed of lead and iron, suspended in oil milled from the seeds of a variety of flora. One rack repeats the content of the other, as Crossley mimics the baker’s repetitive routine, making his daily bread and acknowledging the quotidian pain of impossible consumption.
Courtesy of Harlan Levey Projects
About Sean Crossley
Painting
Oil on linen
20.87 x 25.59 x 1.57 in
53.0 x 65.0 x 4.0 cm
This work comes with a Certificate of Authenticity.
About The Work
For his series Quotidien Pain, Crossley purchased two baker’s trolleys to make, store, and frame paintings. Each trolley has gastro-norm slots intended for trays, which have been replaced by canvases prepared to appear as smooth as the trolley’s steel. While often a frame responds to a painting, these paintings respond to this unusual frame. Bread or croissants seemed too literal as subjects, so this flour was replaced with flowers arranged between the tradition of vanitas and innocuous, ‘flowery’ painting. Each set of racks now serves up a cycle of 15 selected flower species, which seem to melt into the lustrous canvas, fusing the illusion of foreground and background into an indivisible material, an alloy like the steel itself loaded with flowers that neither grow nor die. The shapes and forms of the flowers painted for this work have been selected from François Couplan’s fieldbook Encyclopédie des plantes sauvages comestibles et toxiques de l'Europe (Encyclopedia of edible and poisonous wild plants of Europe). Each is painted with pigments composed of lead and iron, suspended in oil milled from the seeds of a variety of flora. One rack repeats the content of the other, as Crossley mimics the baker’s repetitive routine, making his daily bread and acknowledging the quotidian pain of impossible consumption.
Courtesy of Harlan Levey Projects
About Sean Crossley
- Ships in 10 to 14 business days from Belgium.
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