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This Meat Can’t Be Beat
by Steve Saldivar
The Daily Californian, Thursday, December 2, 2004

In theory, meat is hardly a Grade A choice for an art exhibition. However, there are a number of Bay Area artists who would beg to differ.
In the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery’s new exhibition, “Meat Show,” nine Bay Area artists use every meat imaginable, from mutton to beef to pork to chicken, as a means to explore a variety of ideas.

And why wouldn’t meat be a good source of not only protein and iron, but also artistic inspiration? We are a society with a fetish for the flesh. The exhibition exploits this obsession to explore how we come to understand the different, and sometimes corky, roles that meat play in our lives.
Meat serves as a lens through which the artists strike political critique, with topics ranging from the abuse of power in a consumer culture and, of course, how best to defrost a turkey and dress it up as an eagle.

A digital video by Jackie Sumell entitled “Fanfare for the Common Man,” shows a store-bought turkey impersonating our country’s most beloved symbol of freedom, the bald eagle. This entertaining satire on store-bought patriotism depicts the American dream as being nothing more than a dead turkey.

Laura Splan, a biological science student turned artist, uses her own body to uncover the quiet horrors as of domestic life as well as the entrapment of the household.

To the naked eye, Splan’s work would be nothing more than beautiful wallpaper designed with difficult patterns. However, a closer look reveals that the paint used in the design of the wallpaper is actually meat juice.

Splan goes even further by exploring meat’s role in the relationship between man and animal. In “Dissected #1-4,” the artist uses four photographs of dissected cats. With their heads mostly intact, their bodies show a mixture of bones, meat, fur and blood. It’s horrific.

Of course, Splan meant for it to be this way. This horror show reminds viewers of our biological dependency on animals as well as our mistreatment of them.

Noah Lang’s “Czech Meat Rhapsody” delves into the issue of women as being slabs of meat. Women in lingerie are positioned sensuously in the background, posing with dishes covered in meat, while men are placed in a more powerful societal position, sitting down and waiting for their hunger to be satisfied.

The artist doesn’t delve too far into the subject of how to resolve this subjection of women, but rather chooses to emphasize its absurdity and outright silliness.

With such a negative tone projected in their art, it’s no surprise that most of these artists are vegetarians. The art successfully argues for a closer look of the importance of meat in modern culture.

The themes explored by these artists, be it the corruption of hierarchy or the relationship between the physical self and a culture that often consumes itself, work harmoniously with one another in spite of the wide range of media employed.

These artists have some beef to settle with the America’s contemporary culture, and the art world is now becoming the stage for their meaty discourse to begin. “Meat Show” runs until Jan. 15 at the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, 401 Van Ness Ave., San Francisco. Admission is free. For more information, call 415-554-6080 or visit their Web site at www.sfacgallery.org.

Have a barbecue with Steve at arts@dailycal.org