ART-PRESENTATION: Amuse-bouche.The Taste of Art

The group exhibition “Amuse-bouche. The Taste of Art” presents artworks by 45 international artists from the baroque to the present that explore our sense of taste as a dimension of aesthetic perception. Breaking with the usual museum practice of appealing primarily to the sense of sight, the show offers art-historical and phenomenological encounters with our sense of taste. Some of the works offer a participatory experience – during special guided tours and performances, the works themselves can be tasted at events.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Museum Tinguely Archive

In traditional accounts of the senses, taste is predicated on direct physical contact. We perceive the world around us in all its diversity through the physical sensation of taste in the mouth and on the tongue. The exhibition at Museum Tinguely poses various questions concerning our many fields of taste-related experience: How do we perceive art made of foods and their specific nuances of taste? What happens when our mouth and tongue suddenly take centre stage in the art experience? Can artworks address the sense of taste even without direct physical contact to the viewer? Can gustatory experiences be described and translated into pictures? Can flavour serve as a medium of artistic expression and creativity? “Amuse-bouche. The Taste of Art” includes allegorical depictions of the sense of taste by Baroque masters, works by avant-garde artists of the early 20^th Century and exhibits from the 1960s and ’70s. The main focus is on a representative selection of paintings, photographs, sculptures, video works and installations from the past thirty years, all of which address the ingestion and tasting of food in a variety of ways. Some of the works on display can be tasted during special guided tours and performances. On particular days, visitors can sample edible plants in the “Hortus Deliruciam” an installation- and performance-based project by Marisa Benjamim, or the monumental participatory works made of gingerbread cookies by the Australian arist Elizabeth Willing. Sauerkraut juice labelled “Brine and Punishment” features in a large-scale installation by Slavs and Tatars, a Berlin-based artists’ collective. This sharp-tasting power drink provides a sensory experience within the artist’s philosophical engagement with the many-layered meanings and interpretations of fermentation and “going sour”. Current socio-political issues are also addressed by Emeka Ogboh in his ongoing project “Sufferhead Original”. In the Basel edition of this stout beer that keeps changing its taste, Ogboh once again raises the provocative question: «Who’s afraid of black?» The show also includes works in different media where tastes are merely evoked in the viewer’s imagination.

The exhibition features works by: Sonja Alhauser, Farah Al Qasimi, Janine Antoni, Marisa Benjamim, Joseph Beuys, George Brecht, Pol Bury, Costantino Ciervo, Jan Davidsz. de Heem, Bea de Visser, Marcel Duchamp, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Urs Fischer, Fischli/Weiss, Karl Gerstner, Damien Hirst, Roelof Louw, Sarah Lucas, Opavivara!, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Cildo Meireles, Alexandra Meyer, Antonio Miralda-Dorothee Selz, Nicolas Momein, Anca Munteanu Rimnic, Otobong Nkanga, Emeka Ogboh, Dennis Oppenheim, Meret Oppenheim, Tobias Rehberger, Torbjørn Rødland, Dieter Roth, Roman Signer, Cindy Sherman, Shimabuku, Slavs and Tatars, Daniel Spoerri, Mladen Stilinovic, Sam Taylor-Johnson, Andre Thomkins, Jorinde Voigt, Claudia Vogel, Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann, Elizabeth Willing, Erwin Wurm and Remy Zaugg.

Info: Curator: Annja Müller-Alsbach, Museum Tinguely, Paul Sacher-Anlage 2, Basel, Duration: 19/2-19/5/20, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 11:00-18:00, www.tinguely.ch