I love food. Both consuming and preparing it (or being around someone preparing it). I also love paintings. Particularly the ones that are between large drawings and what we usually define as paintings. And I love when those are presented in an unusual way, off the standard eye-height line arrangement. With that being said, it’s no surprise I’m a fan of Lotteria, Henry Curchod's debut at The Intermission in Piraeus, Greece.
Sticking to the Mediterranean, I wanted to share a few impressions of this great show, which is on view just outside Athens until mid-September. I probably should’ve started the text by saying that I’ve been a fan of the London-based artist’s work since seeing his art fair solo presentation a few years ago. There, Curchod made a suite of paintings that, as far as I understood, showed different scenes of a place where pilots are the only survivors of plane crashes. Now, such a premise would sell me any day, but it was the way these were drawn and painted that sealed the deal. Using oilsticks to draw the picture, build gradients, and handle everything that comes along with an improvised, intuitive way of creating, he then solidifies all that w a brush. The result of such a process is images that are shifting in many ways, collapsing, and frequently (now more than ever) swerving towards abstraction.
And since Curchod never paints from a reference, but uses memory and imagination to get to a visual that conveys a sensation, an idea, or an emotion, he took the same approach when painting Lotteria. Lotteria is his dream restaurant, but instead of painting the dishes, the setting, or any of the “real” action, he focused on the communal joy that the restaurant offers and the "backstage" action. Actually, some of the natural ingredients, such as the catch of the day, onions, or (very Van Goghesque) garlic, or trusty tools such as the cutting board, are the most realistically painted elements. The customers enjoying themselves are reminiscent of French Belle Époque scenery (with a dash of Arabic calligraphy-like brushwork for the depiction of furniture), while the kitchen action scenes often dissolve into a medley of blurry moments. And while building such an image through a series of shifting, sometimes emergency decisions, Curchod doesn’t construct an image but a timeline. Whether enjoying a cheeky ciggie break or getting their face steamed by a boiling pot, his kitchen heroes might be seen as a metaphor for the artist himself and his process. With each dish being their canvas, they’re (barely) containing the chaos of the process, juggling various factors towards a finished product to be enjoyed, judged, and hopefully appreciated by others outside the place it was created in. —Saša Bogojev
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