Joana Vasconcelos

Paris

On the occasion of Joana Vasconcelos‘ exhibition at Versailles, the artist shows one of her works in the small garden of the French Delegation of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

Colourful, joyous, and seductive, Petit Gâteau presents itself in the shape of a huge cupcake put together through the repetition of different rows of plastic moulds commonly used to play at the beach. From a distance, the oversized scale and colourfulness capture the immediate attention of the public, and the unexpected scale emerges as an invitation to enter a world of illusion and fantasy. When approaching it, the viewer recognizes the beach toys that compose the enormous cupcake, revealing the consequent hollowness of the objects. Alluding to the contemporary strategies of seduction which do nothing but compensate the absence of essence through the exuberance of appearance, Petit Gâteau brings us a hyperbolized form in order to deprive us of content, thus exposing the ambiguity and illusion in many of our consumerist options.

Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation – French Delegation

June 21st – September 29th, 2012
39, boulevard de la Tour Maubourg
75007 Paris
France

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