Time to Eat (Black Forest Steak Red #9)

This sculpture consists of a flip clock which is scrambled like a bad dream. It sits upon an empty can of stew that the artist ate because it was time for dinner, and she was hungry. The scrambled clock suggests that the artist has become lost in time, that she has no sense of what time it is, and where it is. The fact that she ate the stew in order to stay alive indicates that the artist is physically trapped, and has no way to escape. Many have speculated about the meaning of the particular can of stew that the artist has chosen to use as a pedestal. The can of stew was created by the Hormel Company, and the artist’s name is Julia Hormel. The can is therefore a symbol of the artist, and the missing stew inside the can is a symbol of the artist’s lost creativity. In addition, the label states that the can contains “no preservatives,” which is a statement about the artist’s inability to create due to the presence of inauthentic art in the world. The artist wrote about the work, saying, “It is a piece about my impotency in the face of the techno-commercialism that surrounds me, and the inability of the language of the avant-garde to meet it on equal terms.”