CHRISTOPHER Y. LEW

For Taster’s Choice, Zak Kitnick presents a new body of work based on the packaging of Hamilton Beach kitchen appliances. Interested in the porous boundaries between art, décor, and utility, Kitnick was attracted to the representation of the product as well as the proximity of the image on the packaging to the object itself. Highlighting notions of process, the titles of the individual works are based on suggested uses and marketing language from the boxes. The works conflate cooking with making art: blending, toasting, brewing, and processing can be regarded as actions performed in the studio or kitchen. Also employing seriality, variation, and repetition informed equally by Minimalism and large-scale industrial production, Kitnick examines how added value is created by providing choice, or the illusion of it. By collapsing package and product, Kitnick likens buying with making—the culling of images, materials, and information becomes the primary method of production. With all six-sides of the work visible from a single vantage point, the products themselves become markedly absent.

-CL