Clearstory Gallery - Bitter | Sweet

Bitter | Sweet

Stefani Rossi

These works began with my investigation of Baroque still life painting. I find seventeenth-century paintings seductive. As I investigated them, I discovered they were intentionally constructed to simultaneously tantalize the viewer’s senses, and also pierce the conscience. One of the ways they did so was by presenting highly desirable items of foreign trade.

Coffee and sugar, once the purview of only the most economically elite, are now so widely proliferated in American culture that just about anyone can access them. I drink coffee. I eat sweets. You likely do too. What fascinates me is not the fact that we partake of these commodities, but the manner in which we do—as though a box of chocolates might seal or save a romantic connection, a cookie has the power to heal, or that the morning cup-o-joe has the capacity to shift all forces in the cosmos to work in our favor. We are devotees, and our routines transform into ritual—both individually and communally.

With these works, my aim has been to cultivate intimate encounters, extending an invitation to contemplate the larger narratives in which we participate on a daily basis. Many of the works, focus on the residue left behind by the consumption of coffee and sugar. The things we live among, what we strive to possess, the detritus we try to eliminate—these all shape our notions regarding beauty, position, status, and belonging.

Bitter/ Sweet construes habitual consumption to be an act of petition, a process of recollection, and an expression of devotion. Visually quiet images, at once entice and slightly disquiet, offering viewers a sensual paradox, inviting us to look, celebrate beauty, and contemplate the unlovely undercurrent we might rather disregard.