Eat From the Floor

Eat from the Floor

Sharon Breuer’s exhibition “Eat from the Floor” consists of a video installation and sculptural works, unfolding a world in which different life forms trickle into one another: human beings, animals, plants, and consumer goods. The human figures lie on the ground, twisted around each other, growing limbs, as if they were trees or roots. Human organs grow or rest on the floor like mushrooms popping up after the rain. The vegetation is endowed with human qualities: the vegetables in the video work are animated, mimicking human behaviors such as lovemaking. In some of the works, a body emits a substance, which turns out to be a product. One body’s waste becomes food for another.

For the most part, the sculptures are made of soft materials. They are sprawled on the reddish floor, conveying a sense of sculpture where muscle tone is decreased. The exhibition is accompanied by striped patterns, which adorn the world and at the same time imprison it.

The title “Eat from the Floor” refers to themes pertaining to politeness, culture, and hygiene. It conjures up a mundane, somewhat awkward moment when a piece of food falls to the floor, and the question arises: Can it be eaten? Is it clean enough? Lifting food from the floor and eating it is an act of gatherers, which takes us back to the dance that our ancestors, the apes, used to perform. The title also refers to the act of eating, which is the motivation for all agriculture. Bringing forth bread out of the earth, nourishment from the ground, are human practices which have existed for thousands of years. Recent decades have seen the development of alternative methods of food production, such as food printing and genetic engineering, and we are gradually moving away from the source, from the place from which our food comes. If man can bring forth bread from the earth, what types of food can he bring forth from the floor?

The exhibition sets out to evoke an animalistic memory, the sense that we are descendants of apes, part of the mammal family. Moreover, it invites us to feel the synthetic cultural structures we have created, structures that surround us, to draw inspiration from them and see them in a new light, at once amused and concerned.

Ruti Sela & Sharon Breuer