Sugar and proteins
A banquet table set for a feast that cannot be eaten: marzipan swans, glazed cakes, sugared brains, dolls resting among desserts, and beetles moving across porcelain.
At the centre of Sugar and Proteins is Table of Wonders, a large constructed still life built in the language of the Flemish banquet painting: abundance, ornament, appetite, and decay concealed inside sweetness. The ceramics on the table were made for the work by the Japanese designer Capi.
In the history of still life, insects often appear at the edge of the feast: a fly on fruit, a beetle near a plate, a small reminder that pleasure and decay occupy the same surface. Here, they are no longer marginal. They become part of the meal.
Burns builds the table by hand, photographs it, and dismantles it. The photograph is the only proof that the banquet existed.
Table of Wonders, 2015
A Crunchy Dessert, 2015
Sunny Side Up! 2015
Sugar and Proteins, 2015
A Crunchy Dessert !! 2015
The Baby, 2015
Sugar flowers, 2015
Stop Staring at Me! 2014