Scratch Me, And I’ll Scratch You
Butter, Wood
118x98x98 in. (300x250x250cm)
2023

Scratch Me and l’ll Scratch You is a sculpture made of butter based on the Stork and Fox fable: A fox invites a stork to eat with him and provides soup in a bowl, which the fox can lap up easily; however, the stork cannot drink it with its beak. The stork then invites the fox to a meal, which is served in a narrow-necked vessel. It is easy for the stork to access but impossible for the fox. The moral drawn is that the trickster must expect trickery in return and that the golden rule of conduct is for one to do to others what one would wish for oneself. The work is questioning the relation of governing politics with ephemerality of knowledge and education. My affinity for fat as an artistic material is because fat is a stand-in for art itself: Butter is talismanic substance, a symbol of survival and comfort, the most religious food and decorative for centuries; a transformative agent, rendering the surrounding situation pliant and changeable, unsettling fixed structures. Reacting to weather, architecture and the number of people surrounding it.

Photography:
Jean-Michael Seminaro