Feast of the Gods

About

We often find life enjoyable when there is more. More of everything – food, wine, people, happiness, time. However, abundance is not a singular desire, but a cyclical process. Once we have more, we want more and when we get more, we still want more. Joy is momentary, but its pursuit is continuous. Where does extravagance end? When do we say no? I’ll do it if you do it, we say, looking to others to validate our desires. 

The artists in this exhibition explore different aspects of this human experience. They consider both the individual and collective responses we have to celebration and excess. Through their work, each artist mediates ideas of abundance and lack, pleasure and pain, consumption and production, waste and use; through various lenses that are internal, material, social and allegorical. 

The Feast of the Gods, painted by Giovanni Bellini in 1514, inspired the title. The painting depicts the mythical ideal; a gorgeous landscape populated by charming figures, leisurely enjoying themselves in paradise. The representation of mythological figures as laymen engaged in the mortal pursuits of love and war inspired many to continue pursuing the richness of existence. However, this thematic abundance of life–once a subject of religious optimism and indulgence has been warped by the excess of modern overconsumption and disparity. The material has replaced the spiritual. 

A visual vocabulary of the dynamics of indulgence and ignorance can look like many different things. The artists in this show construct powerful images and objects that grapple with extravagance and the darkness related to it, the implications and amusement of having a modern-day Feast of the Gods.