WHAT YOU SEE IS NEITHER FOOD NOR ART

On October 29th, Galleria Gaburro will inaugurate in Milan a group exhibition inspired by Daniel Spoerri's aphorism. This exhibition reinterprets the poetics of the Master through the lens of a new generation of artists.

In our contemporary society, food has taken on new characteristics. Constantly reproduced through images that populate media and social networks, it has become a paradigm of the spectacle of everyday life. Following Spoerri’s aphorism, which serves as the title of the exhibition, the show seeks to build an intergenerational and intermedial dialogue, starting with the Romanian artist, who preserves and immortalizes scenes of daily life by referencing the ritualistic spectacle of meal consumption or any other action. Engaging with broader reflections on everyday life, ritual, alchemy, and food (“about food, with and without food, through food and the body”), four artists consciously and distinctively interpret an aspect of Spoerri’s poetic.

The exhibit, titled What You See Is Neither Food Nor Art—a new project by Galleria Gaburro at their Via Cerva 25 exhibition space in Milan—explores the imagery of Daniel Spoerri through a collection of 27 works that, from October 29, 2024, to January 31, 2025, challenge visitors’ perceptions by intertwining presence and absence, reality, hyperreality, and surrealism.

“We have been related to Daniel for about ten years, having first met him in Austria during the Pentecost celebrations of Hermann Nitsch. Through our conversations, I was captivated by the charisma and strength that only a great master possesses. His personality, though rough, is incredibly sharp and insightful, which fascinated me. Since then, we have believed and invested in his work. Our relationship with Iain, on the other hand, is much more recent; we were welcomed into his home-studio in Manchester, and we’ve hosted him here in Italy. Between Milan, Verona, and Florence, we have introduced him to the marvels of Italian art history.” – Giorgio Gaburro, Founder of Galleria Gaburro.

Curated by Matteo Scabeni, featuring works by Iain Andrews, Leda Bourgogne, Nebojsa Despotovic, Daniel Spoerri, and Malte Zenses, the group exhibition delves into the alchemy of the table, where everything is a constant and repeated transformation of reality.

Daniel Spoerri made a turning point in art history by preserving scenes of daily life, such as rituals tied to the consumption of meals. His practice, in line with Nouveau Réalisme, involves the retrieval of worn-out objects, decontextualizing them to transform them into something else. In his tableau-piège (snare pictures), he reconstructs the architecture of laid tables, intertwining symbolic, intimate, and biographical suggestions.

Iain Andrews’ works hybridize biblical episodes and texts like Paradise Lost, creating vortices of colour where detailed forms blend with barely hinted elements, stimulating psychological responses and layered physicality of colour and meaning. Andrews captures a surreal atmosphere and existential pain, freeing art through the lightness of the painterly gesture—similar to the lightness of objects hanging on walls, trapped in representation, in Spoerri’s work.

Leda Bourgogne investigates practices of bodily control, focusing on themes of self-defense and self-control. Her works, contrasting in materials, reflect a tension between stress and distress, representing a path toward liberation and reclaiming identity through contraction, concentration, and catharsis.

Nebojsa Despotovic delves into the mysterious recesses of memory to celebrate painting as an intimate and personal narrative. His artworks, characterized by expressionistic atmospheres, explore the everyday objects of Spoerri, creating a connection between reality and subject where figures are placed on the fragile boundary between what is real and the aesthetic distortion of memory.

Malte Zenses’ works expand the vocabulary of abstract painting and new realism, integrating memories and places into abstract codes. His images create a harmony between personal and impersonal, guiding the viewer on a path of reflection. His poetics explore memory and oblivion, offering an education in memory and in the sensations that anchor us to reality and life.

Following the artistic gesture of Spoerri, which consisted of drawing from the real to act in its aesthetic reworking, inevitably transforming the object into something else, the narrative of the exhibition is built on a mutual tension between two dimensions: the immanent, the real—where transformation takes place—and the alchemical, the beyond-real—both a physical and metaphorical space created after the alteration of matter. The different poetic visions of the artists intertwine, creating a dialogue about this impossible tension between reality and its transformation and transfiguration, always and inevitably tied to reality.

The exhibition space is, therefore, a space without limits and defined boundaries (except for the natural ones of the works themselves), where this exploration of food intertwines with its memory and process of transformation.

Thus, “what you see is neither food, nor art.”