Marta Tuta
LUNCHES
September 2-11, 2016
Gallery PM

Exhibition opening: Friday, September 2 at 7pm

Lunches

Throughout the history of art the symbolism of food has always suggested the fullness, but also the transience of life, it referred to a wider social context of the represented image or served as a detail in cultural and anthropological identification of different civilization circles.

It is not therefore surprising that, inspired by this topic, the academic painter Marta Tuta, in her series of drawings Lunches, devoted full attention to food, thus alluding to the importance in which the food itself becomes art. Day after day, throughout one whole year, she carefully archived her daily meals creating thus her own permanently documented calendar of menus. Plates full of various foods became a consistent motif through which she gave a completely different context to her everyday. Thus, from a routine, necessity and need, the phenomenon of eating became a diary of intimate ceremonies and rituals that reveal much more than just living the everyday. With her discipline and perseverance, Marta Tuta drew what she enjoys the most, hosting on the paper a true feast full of flavour, colour and taste.

By choosing a kind of genre scenes she does not give up on her recognizably playful and light-hearted illustrative visual language which she uses to transform the usual everyday into visually unusual. Using coloured pencils, she explores and coordinates the concept and execution in a compositionally balanced way, creating a kind of art cookbook. In these realizations, the close-ups of meals on bases and tables, accessories and dishes, are stylized without losing their essence and appeal. She repeatedly deals with the menu, as well as with her still life, without repeating herself, and thus confirms her skill of expression in its repeated simplicity. In a safe combination and ratio of spices and pencil strokes she creates meals and drawings that are always delicious and complete.

Main dishes, sides, drinks and desserts make up the compositions that convey a simple, but systematically elaborated visual language. The diversity of the menu demonstrates the creativity in creating and preparing dishes, where each dish has a different background. Through food and ingredients of her lunches, Marta Tuta can evoke feelings and use smells to trigger memories of the events of the particular day. She used food to record her schedules, thoughts and events throughout the year, spicing them up with various delicacies. Recipes and courses full of ideas affirmed food as a constant source of pleasure in all flavours and combinations of sweet, salty, bitter and sour. Seasonal fruit and vegetables, exotic recipes and spices, mixing and the flavours of exotic cuisines, traditional dishes, fast food meals, sweets and desserts make up these menus with infinite combination possibilities. Roasted, boiled, stewed, raw or prepared food and carefully served on plates and platters creates colourful compositions recorded in time. Her menus are composed of what the nature offers in line with the seasonal calendar, and she carefully selects foods, the change of which represents the change of seasons. She listens to the cyclicity of nature and synchronizes it with her own metabolism, feeding us with the daily dining experience, her everyday celebrations. Smell, taste and sight are the senses we use to explore, taste and which we surrender to, becoming hungry tasters of prepared and served lunches. Hungry for art, we consume her drawings.

Marta Tuta’s kitchen smells of optimism where the imagination and play open the appetites in which life becomes more colourful. Bites enriched with various flavours offer everything necessary for those who love to enjoy, eat and live. The creativity on the plate or on the paper is the secret of the author’s creation. By looking at Marta Tuta’s drawing each of us becomes a gourmet who committedly enjoys the attractiveness of the drawings’ execution and the closeness of gastronomy they offer. The necessity of repeating meals, as well as drawings, witnesses the necessity of crating from day to day.

Marijana Paula Ferenčić

 

Lunches is the collection of 366 consecutive lunches. I want the food I put in my body to touch all the untouchable parts of my being and in a way make me aware of the presence of earth, air, water and fire in me. I believe that the food I prepare for myself provides me with completeness represented by the given four elements, needed for a full and harmonious life. After each meal I imagine how the nutritional ingredients affect my mood and stimulate emotions. I mostly eat fruit, vegetables and sometimes seafood as well. I therefore record the beginning of enjoyment, the visual aspect of it, in order to extend its duration through drawing.

Throughout the year I drew each of my lunches, an everyday ritual that fills me, sometimes entertains me, and always encourages creativity. In an archival manner I monitored and recorded something fleeting, something that is repeated every day, but always in a different way. Sometimes I like to say that I am a food addict, and perhaps this is the case of a well-known trap: “the more you eat, the hungrier you get“. After drawing these abundant lunches I would get hungry pretty soon and I had to react quickly and satisfy my hunger immediately.

Lunches are the main feast of the day. I wanted to raise awareness about the passion, form and spirit driver of life everyone has experienced. I do not see food as a mere means of survival, but as another opportunity to enrich my spirituality meal by meal, day by day.

Marta Tuta

 

The realization of the exhibition was financially supported by the City Office for Education, Culture and Sports of Zagreb and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia.

 

WORKING HOURS

Wednesday to Friday 11am – 7pm
Saturday and Sunday 10am – 6pm
Mondays and holidays – closed

 

Dom HDLU
Trg žrtava fašizma 16
10000 Zagreb