Behold The World's Tastiest Padded Cell

[vansau]

Behold The World's Tastiest Padded Cell

It's padded! It's Pink! It's made from cotton candy! It's (probably) delicious!

Modern art often leaves a lot of folks scratching their heads, mainly because it's so open to interpretation. This particular piece of artwork, however, would no doubt entertain its audience since it also served as a tasty snack. Well, so long as the audience liked carnival junk food.

Back in November, Performa Arts had a Russian-themed exhibit called Jennifer Rubell created "Padded Cell" as part of the event. The piece featured 1,600 cotton candy cones.

Here's the description of the piece from Rubell:

Padded cell is an 8'X16' freestanding room constructed of basic building materials, with a single door that contains a plexiglass window. Inside, the walls and ceilingare padded with pink cotton candy, and a bare light bulb hangs in the center. The door is opened at 9pm, but the interior is visible through the window throughout the evening. The Red Party's main dinner is served inside a Russian-themed constructivist set, and Padded Cell acts as an escape from that, an all-American funhouse that is at the same time confining, threatening, claustrophobic. It is an object that addresses the dark side of pleasure, the price of pleasure, the possibility that pleasure is its own punishment.

I'm not sure I'd find this piece threatening or representative of the dark side of pleasure. I'd probably just find it delicious.

Source: io9

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[TimeLord]

When I get the money to build my own house, I will build a room like this just for the purpose of being awesome and a supply of candy!

 

[Lillowh]

I'd be driven insane just by being in that delicious tooth rotting cell because of the feel of the walls.

 

[CoverYourHead]

This is one of the few pieces of art that I just want to eat.

 

[Sinclair Solutions]

Who...who would do this? I mean, it's awesome but...

I can't figure out if I'm perturbed by the waste of so much cotton candy or the explanation of the artist.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

And this is why I think people arguing that games are art are strange. You really want to be associated with these pretentious idiots?

 

[NeoAC]

I think that room has its uses. If the neighbor's kids get too annoying, I chuck them in there and they eat until they're stuck. And then I don't have to worry about them being on my lawn! And they get to eat candy! Everybody wins!

 

[WittyInfidel]

Do the snozzberries taste like snozzberries?

 

[Therumancer]

I'm something of a cynic, my first thought here is how much money she wound up getting directly or indirectly for this/the show. Truthfully I think a lot of modern artists just collect money, and then just do something silly, random, or just plain lazy, and then either assign a meaning they feel they can defend, or claim "it's open to interpetation".

When I first saw that picture the first though I had was that it looked like a store room more than anything. It makes me think that it went down with the artist working with someone who had a lot of excess cotton candy in storage or for sale, saw it on the shelves and knew they could get it for cheap so sat there and stacked it around the inside of a pre-fab shed or something and said "oh I know, I'll say it's a padded cell since it looks sort of like it might be one".

I suppose it's neat and all on some levels, given that much cotton candy in one place, but this is one of those things that I can't really take seriously as art, and it makes me think of various abuses of the artistic grant system through the years.

Of course I might be being too judgemental, after all I'm not familiar with the artist or her entire body of work, I'm just going by that picture and the whole "modern art" label. Given that I could drop an empty coke bottle into a dirty public urinal, take a picture of it, and then claim it was art expressing my thoughts on consumerism, and probably be taken seriously if I expressed it with enough sincerity or managed to get my "work" displayed in a show is the entire problem. Heck, with luck I might even get someone to award me grant money to take more artistic pictures... :/

 

[HellspawnCandy]

Pretty clever theme.

 

[maddawg IAJI]

I will never understand modern art, but I do understand the art of sugary confection.

 

[Scrythe]

[HEADING=2]Suddenly, this comes to mind:[/HEADING]

[small]I wouldn't give a fuck either, if it was made of cotton candy.[/small]

 

[therandombear]

...awesome, I want a room like that..

Maybe freshen up Kross's carboard box fort with some pink cotton candy and unicorn pictures?

 

[Oz Draconis]

yes. yes they do.

 

[Andronicus]

I can feel the cavities in my teeth spreading just from looking at that cell.

 

[ShadowsofHope]

That room.. must be eaten. Fuck "the dark side of pleasure".

NAOW!

 

[Dfskelleton]

Dark side of pleasure? No, I just want to eat it.

 

[unacomn]

If they ever lock me up in an insane asylum, I hope that's what my room looks like. Although, I'll probably try to eat the walls oven if it's a regular room, being insane and all.