Bun Making Machine

Joe Daun

Exhibition: Apr 28 – Jun 4, 1995


Springing from personal reflections and cultural observations, Joseph Daun’s work aims to activate the viewer, to thwart passive appreciation through conceptual and kinesthetic stimulation. While traditional definitions of art preclude the possibility of function, Daun calls upon it to reconfigure the spectator as a participant. Subverting his own methodology, Daun installed a work titled Function in the conference room gallery at ArtPace in the spring of 1995. Behind locked glass doors sat a stack of wooden packing crates unobtrusively simulating the back room of any gallery or museum. The only clue to their fraudulent nature was the insertion of thin veneer panels which glowed with a soft light from within the crates. Identifying the tableau as art (electrified boxes with glowing rectangles) or not (random placement of crates behind closed doors in an art institution) involved the viewer in a Duchampian game of contradictions.

Daun’s subject matter is the mundane. It is-and I mean to avoid disdain-something everyone can understand. Through the fabrication of common fantasies, our fears and desires are materialized, unmasked and laid bare. Daun’s bulky, mechanical hulks, which grumble and clank in apparent resistance to their destructive tasks, manifest the frustrations of post-industrial society. The Plate Breaking Machine and the Floor Drilling Piece (both 1994) are characterized by the low-tech ingenuity of Rube Goldberg contraptions. A kindred spirit is Swiss artist Jean Tinguely, whose meta-matic painting machines of 1958-59 and self-destructive Homage to New York (1960) rely on the “functional use of chance.” Daun also acknowledges Ed Kienholz’s Beanery (1965) as the inspiration for his own Diner Piece (1994). Simulating the convivial ambiance of a coffee house, this tableau provided participants with booths in which to sit, sip coffee and converse. A forty-foot long conveyor belt carried the visitor’s used mugs to their crashing demise at the end of the belt.

Daun’s residency at ArtPace investigates the recuperative effects of consumption through the evolving history of the preparation and storage of food. Bun Making Machine, which bakes dough transported from freezer to oven on a conveyor belt and subsequently dumps it on the floor, mimics the industrial production of food in bakeries and bread factories. Post-industrial fast food is the literal content of Cheeseburger Piece, a desiccator jar filled with burgers from McDonald’s, while wall drawings of the kneading of dough and a neon illustration of the underground storage of carrots in a small-scale root cellar evoke a nostalgia for the agrarian past. With its shelves of sparkling glass jars containing pickles, carrots, beets, and rutabagas, The Last Painting conjures up memories of the taste of homegrown foods and canning contests at county fairs. Its elaborate gold frame and Plexiglass shield prevent the satisfaction of consumption: a deferral of taste from the culinary to the aesthetic, which is facilitated by the work’s cool, seductive formalism. The visitor is invited instead to eat the warm, tasty results of the Bun Making Machine or the toast from the toaster atop a breakfast table by artist Henry Stein. Stimulating all of the senses, Daun’s exhibition encourages the breaking of bread as a symbol of camaraderies, community and continuity.

-Frances Colpitt

Artist

Joe Daun

San Antonio, Texas, USA

A native of Miami, Florida, Joseph E. Daun was born in 1967 and received his BFA degree in 1990 from Florida State University with a major in photography. He completed his MFA degree at the University of Texas at San Antonio in May 1994 with an emphasis in sculpture and photography.
Daun has been the recipient of numerous grants and scholarships including the UTSA College of Fine Arts and Humanities Research Grant, the Sommer Foundation Scholarship, and the UTSA Foreign Studies Grant. In 1994 he was one of twenty-one artists selected to participate in the International Artist-in-Residence Program sponsored by the Pace Roberts Foundation for Contemporary Art.
Daun has exhibited his work extensively in San Antonio at such venues as the Blue Star Art Space, the 1203 Art Space, the UTSA Gallery, and the UTSA Satellite Space. He was most recently included in a group show at the DiverseWorks Gallery in Houston, Texas.

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Curators

Mary Beebe

San Diego, California, USA

Mary Beebe is the Director of the Stuart Collection, the University of California, San Diego.

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Anthony Jones

New York, New York, USA

Anthony Jones is Rector and Vice-Provost at the Royal College of Art in New York.

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Richard Koshalek

Los Angeles, CA

Richard Koshalek is the Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

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Lowery Sims

New York, New York, USA

Lowery Sims is the Associate Curator of 20th Century Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

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Dianne Vanderlip

Denver, Colorado, USA

Dianne Vanderlip is the Curator of 20th Century Art at the Denver Art Museum.

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Benito Huerta

Houston, Texas, USA

Benito Huerta is an independent critic and artist in Houston, Texas.

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