Artists Explore Our Emotional And Physical Relationship With Food Through “Eat/ing Your Heart Out”

An ongoing collaboration and conversation between artists entitled Eat/ing Your Heart Out will take place at CRUSH CURATORIAL from Saturday, September 16 through Monday, October 2 beginning with an Opening Reception on Saturday, September 16 from 6 to 9 p.m. The exhibition, curated by Molly Surno, will investigate how, why, how much, and what drives our impulse to eat. Eating nourishes our bodies, but what happens to our bodies through eating? The act of eating reveals things on an emotional level for people, including emotional bonds, power structures, and relationships. This exhibition will pose a series of questions and the twelve artists will navigate the symbolic, gestural, emotional, and political relationship to metabolizing.

“I am so excited to be hosting Eat/ing Your Heart Out curated by Molly Surno,” said founder of CRUSH CURATORIAL, Karen Hesse Flatow. “Molly and I have been having conversations about what an exhibit space can bring to the East End that is outside the traditional gallery structure. Eat/ing Your Heart Out will not only have performance and media-based work in the exhibit space, but will also expand beyond the potato barn walls. We will be hosting an artists’ dinner at Almond Restaurant in Bridgehampton, a communal dinner with Rikrit Tirivanija, and a foraging walk with Scott Bluedorn.”

There will be R. Crumb’s original drawings from the cookbook, Eat It, made up of his wife’s recipes; Cheryl Donegan’s Craft, a variety of sculptures made with the artist’s tongue; the installation Recipe for Potable Water by Allie Wist that displays a method for desalinating ocean water for drinking in the face of sea level rise; Molly Surno’s vagina cake that animates the relationship between sexual desire and eating; Christopher Chiappa’s Swiss Project, wall pieces made from deli collected Swiss cheese which are enlarged and turned into water-cut aluminum sculptures; and works from several others, including Ilana Babou-Harris, Christina Crawford, Suzan Pitt, Joshua Schwartz, Elaine Tin Nyo, and Almond Zigmund.

Cheryl Donegan: Film Still from video, Craft, 1999. (Courtesy of the Artist)

“Working with CRUSH CURATORIAL is a deeply collaborative experience which is why I wanted to bring a more interactive exhibition to the Amagansett gallery,” added curator Molly Surno. “There is nothing more binding or alienating than eating, which is the subject of investigation for Eat/ing Your Heart Out.”

There will be a series of performative actions and events including dinners, talks, and cooking classes. There is more information on these events to follow.

CRUSH CURATORIAL is an artist-run curatorial project founded by Karen Hesse Flatow who lives and works in Manhattan and Amagansett.

CRUSH CURATORIAL is located at 68A Schellinger Road in Amagansett. For more information, visit www.crush-curatorial.com.