Imagery from the 400-year-old paintings of Italian master Giuseppe Arcimboldo are meticulously recreated with the most unlikely of materials: food waste. Artist Klaus Enrique brings photography and sculpture together in a series of surprisingly detailed works ranging from the strikingly beautiful to the grotesque. Features are rendered in everything from grapes and stalks of wheat to black-tinted chicken skin and egg shells.
In addition to the works referencing 16th century art, Enrique’s portraits include recognizable faces like Mahatma Ghandi and pop culture figures like Darth Vader. Each of the works is inherently ephemeral, lasting only as long as the organic materials stay fresh. Photography enables the sculptures to live on after they have begun to decay.
“It is with the joint resolve to not only be continually and refreshingly unique, but to also satisfy with each and every one of his works the depth of his artistic agency – to bring vividly to light the themes that underlay human experience, to unearth and to elucidate the choices that are accordingly available to every one of us and to portray the enormous possibility of our infinitely-complex, social moment – that Enrique breathes life to his work, that ensures that his images will be remembered, long after his final breath,” reads Enrique’s artist statement.
Images courtesy of WENN

