It’s like a scene out of a sugar-filled nightmare – strawberry laces falling out of the mouth of a face covered in icing, bacon crispies forming a majestic set of horns and a nose sculpted out of a Mars bar mini.
This is the art of James Ostrer; while tackling an addiction to all things sweet and nutritionless he created these monstrous portraits, depicting greed and gluttony in his latest project Wotsit All About.
Having spent a total of £5,000 on the likes of jelly babies, donuts and other edibles to use in the project so far, It’s been a long process of experimentation with different products. Ostrer admits that he once burnt his face working with mashed potato because he was too excited to wait for it to cool.
The portraits are a repulsive representation of the confectionery world, with models (and himself) often sat for hours under thick mask of sickly icing and cream.
“It was super fun. It feels like you’re two years old in a high chair being fed with a wooden spoon by a drunk person wearing a blindfold. The point where my mouth and eyes were engulfed and I lost artistic control. That drove me nuts, but it was a great exercise in letting go, which I rarely do.”
The finished artworks look like something that could be the lovechild of Heston Blumenthal and Noel Fielding.
A tribal theme runs through the portraits, with many of the models completely naked. Ostrer also sees Wotsit All About is a colourful representation of modern consumerism.
“The intent behind making these works was to create a new form of tribes people based on what we negatively consume. Greed both corporate and personal is where most of the world’s problems are coming from. What this project has ultimately done for me is to make me finally confront how bad my relationship with these food types had really become.”
It’s enough to make the biggest sweet-tooth turn their back on sugar for a while.
Image courtesy of James Ostrer