Giantism in art, if not in life, is almost always appealing. If achieved expertly it can be seductive and enchanting. Super size enchants because it plays with basic natural laws. If normal dimensions can be disregarded, our own place in the universe is a mutable condition, too.

Peter Anton possesses the talent plus the necessary wit to work on this scale. He is also a superb artisan. (If he were a painter instead of a sculptor his skillfulness would ally him with Photo Realism) Although we’re fooled into thinking anything in Anton’s plaster inventory is real, the way his confections brush against reality causes a frisson. Anton’s objects are startling realistic down to the last detail: the sugar crystals that coat outsized gum drops seem so right that if we haven’t yet surrendered to Anton’s vision, a spell of anxiety might precede the enchantment.

A meticulous attention to detail distinguishes Anton from the most celebrated practitioner of Gigantism, Claes Oldenburg. Anton’s addition of refinement, to that Oldenburg, affords him the ability to startle, which is his great contribution to the genre of the humongous.

Anton knows that if he is going to make hedonic food over and over, to evoke sheer pleasure and luxury always in the same way isn’t enough: he has to ring enough changes to keep everybody interested. And smartly, he has expanded his candy vision to include some that speak to the kid in us; chocolate covered cherries, jawbreakers and gummy fish.

But Anton’s chocolate boxes are his richest and most sustained work. The very notion of a heterogeneous sampler box gives him license to play within the confines of the grid box. The chocolates veer into decadence. They embody an inherently dark vision, and in some pieces Anton exploits this by making pieces that look ravaged as if they had been bitten into and abandoned in their comprised condition. Some of the grid box contains squares that jar the viewer because they are empty, save for the pleated paper.

Because nuances are one of Anton’s strong points, the chocolate boxes often approach being narratives, but to read morality or politics into the maneuvers within the grid, would be to upset the balance Anton has achieved between edginess and indulgence. It would be well to remember that paintings from the rococo period can, despite their embodiment of rapture, contain subtle warnings of destruction.

Scott Richards Contemporary Art
251 Post Street Suite 425
San Francisco (CA) 94108 United States
Tel. +1 (415) 7885588
gallery@srcart.com
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