WALL CHOWER ("Conceptual Artist" Gnawing Through A Wall)

New York Post ^ | February 17, 2005 | James Gardner

[MisterRepublican]

In the words of the great chef Escoffier, architecture is the noblest of the arts, and the noblest manifestation of archi tecture is the art of the pastry chef.

The connection between concrete and baked goods hasn't been lost on Emily Katrencik, a 30-year-old conceptual artist whose ongoing project consists of gnawing through a wall in the apartment of Louky Keijsers, owner of the LMAKprojects gallery in Chelsea.

Katrencik does this by eating through 1.956 inches a day. The project started on New Year's Day, and the hole in the wall is now big enough that she can stick her head through it.

Unfortunately, you won't get to see her chewing through the wall, which is made up mostly of gypsum. Because she's a conceptual artist, she prefers to avoid the "spectacle" component she associates with performance art.

What you will see, as you enter the cell-like room in which the event takes place, is the partially masticated wall, as well as a video loop of Katrencik in action.

Most striking of all are the sound effects of the artist's highly amplified jaws. There's also a loaf of bread, baked with some of the dust from the wall, of which the visitor is encouraged to partake. (This visitor declined.)

This isn't the first time she's put her MIT education to such use: She's also eaten part of Le Corbusier's Carpenter Center in Harvard, though not nearly enough to satisfy some of us.

[Bahbah]

Did you mean "Wall Chewer?"

[MisterRepublican]

No, that is the name of the story at New York Post.

[July 4th]

I don't even know where to start with this one...

[Bahbah]

that is the name of the story at New York Post.

Oops.

[ArrogantBustard]

I suppose her next trick will be chewing carpet ...

< leer >

[Snake65]

Interviewer: I see. Well, er, it looks as if Ron is ready now. He's got the bricks. He's had his passport checked and he's all set to go. And he's off on the first ever cross-Channel jump. (Ron runs down the beach and jumps; he lands about four feet into the water) Will Ron be trying the cross-Channel jump again soon?

Mr Vercotti: No. No. I'm taking him off the jumps, Er, because I've got something lined up for Ron next week that I think is very much more up his street.

Interviewer: Er, what's that?

Mr Vercotti: Er, Ron is going to eat Chichester Cathedral.

(Cut to Chichester Cathedral. Ron walks up to it, cleaning his teeth.)

Interviewer: Well, there he goes, Ron Obvious of Neaps End, in an attempt which could make him the first man ever to eat an entire Anglican Cathedral.

(Ron takes a hefty bite at a buttress, screams and clutches his mouth. Cut to countryside: a map, and a banner saying 'Tunnelling to Java '. Interviewer and Vercotti walk up to map.)

[WorkingClassFilth]

I earnestly pray that this freak isn't funded - in any way - by one red cent of tax monies.

[Flightdeck]

conceptual artist = premature senile dementia

[peacebaby]

and the National Endowment for the Arts contributed to this stupid stunt.

[Kokojmudd]

Wall chewing? No artist here just termites. They need to call the bug man.

[OpusatFR]

My kids when through the plaster playing helicopter.

I still have the hole.

I always knew my talent was on par with the elites.

[OpusatFR]

when = went through...

[finnman69]

LOL, im not touching this, but it reminds me of Klinger from M.A.S.H. trying to eat a Jeep.

[Abathar]

I bet her Prof's at MIT are just proud as hell of her too.

[finnman69]

Weird

http://www.lmakprojects.com/artists/emily.htm

ARTISTS' STATEMENT

Katrencik's work takes on the main space of social and built architecture, asking the question, "can we engage architecture to counter its consumption of us?" and addresses the interstitial systems of both the social and built space-their potentials and failures as psychological and livable space and the individual's ability or disability to act because of the codes that form these spaces. Recently her work incorporates real life into projects by creating a discourse between the two. She holds a Bachelors degree in Sculpture from the San Francisco Art Institute and a Masters of Science in Visual Studies from M.I.T. in 2001. “I slip between boundaries. My work rides a boundary between art and life. I place myself on this porous edge, as I place myself into the interstices of buildings and place buildings into my own body. Sometimes the art mimics life and other times the life ends up becoming what was already explored through artistic practice. Both of these are risks, one can forget the porous boundary that they created between the self and the art and fall into moments of a psychosis, loosing objectivity with this loss of figure and ground, but then gaining insight in the process of regaining the state of subjectivity.”

Detail from documentation of performance "consuming architecture" 2001

[Atlas Sneezed]

conceptual artist = premature senile dementia

---

conceptual artist = unemployable attention puppy

[MHT]

So worthy of NEA money! Just a touch of lead in the paint would add a gourmet flourish.

[finnman69]

On January 1, 2005 Emily Katrencik began her new project created specifically for a space on 60 North 6TH Street that is part artist’s lab and part space for living. Each day for forty-one days Katrencik is ingesting 1.956 inches of a sheetrock wall that separates the gallery from the gallerist’s personal living space. Katrencik invites the visitors to the gallery to take an active position in the piece by offering them bread which contains minerals extracted from the sheetrock wall. Through the act of consumption, boundaries collapse between the gallery owner and the artist, between the architecture and the body––creating a new space with the cutting and connecting of the two different spaces.

By consuming the wall, Katrencik unravels the seamless construction of our identity in relation to our controlled environment, revealing a counter position and providing action as a model to be taken in order to create one’s own space within the system.

[finnman69]

Someone should go to the gallery and hand her this through the wall.